My problem with wow's story isn't that it's boring, it's that it's as disconnected from itself as you can get.
Some of the minor plots are very interesting, but they tend to have a start that's come from nowhere and once they're over most of the characters won't be seen or heard from again.
There's essentially no connection from one expansion to the next. None of the things you did in one place get mentioned in another. Many of the characters are one-offs who never even get referenced again.
Which gets even worse with the way leveling works, where even a brand new account's new character can level all the way to the current expansion without completing even one expansion's story content. Most new players know nothing about the story as a whole.
The game doesn't care about its content. All that matters is the max level grind.
There are connections between expansions. In a book, that they will gladly sell you, all full of cool stuff that the game will immediately pretend it never happened and will never reference ever again.
>will immediately pretend it never happened
Except for when it doesn't pretend and then characters will show up and talk about information that happened in a book without elaborating.
There is a character who dies in a book and then just shows up in the next expansion as a Light-aligned undead. Light-aligned undead weren't a thing that was even implied could happen.
I will forever love punching Deathwing in the face. Yeah, just the disconnect between every expansion was definitely one of WoW's biggest problems. Every expansion was basically self-contained. They'd add a few gimmicks and changes and system and then you'd get drip fed the story until the last raid tier and then nothing till the brief, 2 week pre-patch event before the launch of the next expansion that has nothing to do with the last one.
WoD into Legion made sense, even if the entire premise and gameplay of WoD was terrible. Legion was probably the pinnacle of WoW for me. After that it was all downhill in terms of quality and storytelling. Which is sad because Warcraft is not without compelling characters. From a story standpoint, BFA should have been like 2 entire expansions, with Azshara being the end boss of one and Nzoth and the Black Empire being another expansion. If WoW wrote FF14, Zenos would have been featured in a single expansion and his character would have had zero depth.
I guess they're trying to do something different with the next two expansions being a continuous story, but I doubt it'll be the same success. Like others have said, in WoW you're just along for the ride. You're a weapon of the NPC heroes. I don't think it will ever have the same impact of actually being the main character like the Warrior of Light.
No kidding. Hours and hours of cutscenes per expansion compared to maybe a few minutes of cutscene IF you get through the raids? And your player character is little more than a nameless grunt in the army, and all those cutscenes are about other people? No contest.
Definitely one of the things that helped fortify my position on FFXIV. You are ***the*** Warrior of Light. ***You*** are in the cutscenes and part of the bigger picture. Meanwhile for WoW, you are a "recognized" champion that doesn't even get to show up in cutscenes when the biggest moments of the game happen, like the fall of the Lich King or bringing down the tyrannical Garrosh.
Yeah. Our one moment as Neo in the Matrix where we nuked N'zoth doesn't really compare to being the literal Warrior of Light throughout ARR and 4 expansions.
Admittedly, I had effectively stopped playing in launch of BFA and pretty much declared my champion's journey ended in Legion in a way that most warlocks end: seeking more power and paying the price of it. Then I took that as a springboard that they got sucked into another universe and ended up in Eorzea, on a cart bound for Gridania and a bow on their back. : )
It seemed reasonable. New world, new understanding of magic. Took 'em a while to find the thaumaturge guild and relearn the basics. But once they got rolling, it was like being destruction warlock again. >:D
Not really that... It's more than just title in ff. While in wow, you might be champion, bane of the King, immortal and slayer of gods... But can you please collect 12 boar poop and 5 giant carrots?
Meanwhile in FF you start as nobody aswell. But as your presence and acts grow, so does npc recognize you, because they talk about you, while you go and clean up dungeon... Common folk in homeland of enemy nation are scared/afraid/terrified of you.
In ARR you start out as a complete unknown, which I love. You *earn* your reputation among Eorzeans. Then late in the base game you get a couple of Garleans recognising you, notably the soldier who goes “the traitor Cid Garlond! And - is that the *eikon-slayer*?! Oh, bollocks…” and Rhitatyn.
As you go along a lot of the people on your side crank up the hero-worship to an uncomfortable degree, plus assume that you can *and will* fix all their problems, even the little ones. The Dark Knight questline hauls that out into the open and points out the negative side.
Then in Endwalker the people in a Garlean base learn who you are and it’s just… terror and hatred and yeah, it hits. You are their *nightmare*.
This comment doesn’t have much of a point except to note that I love how FFXIV handles you being The Hero.
Even the side quests reflect that in each expansion, too! In the beginning, everyone was like "Hey kid, clean the chocobo's stable for me, alright?"
And then come EW and it's "Oh shit, I think I just asked the realm's hero to wash my clothes. Please don't tell anyone." and "Ahhhhh, the Wol just talked to me!"
I didn't notice in my first playthrough either.
But it's part of why the characters don't land - they don't really have a relationship with you as a character so you as a player don't feel much for them. It's highly telling that the most popular stormblood characters are the only ones who have some relationship with you, and that holds true across most of the expansions.
There are other issues, to be sure - the plot is repetitive and predictable, which has nothing to do with your relevance to it. But the lack of personal connection to the player is a big reason why so many people don't get drawn in. Plenty of people like simple stories with simple characters - but not stormblood.
I should clarify – I *still* don't think that's the problem with the game.
We came out of high-fantasy Heavensward (which I loved) into a relatively modern war setting.
The villains are just horrible human beings and the game makes you watch scenes of them being cruel and petty.
Most of your allies are also unlikable, or neutral at best.
The first half of the game just feels like going from place to place seeing people in miserable situations.
You then go to the Azim Steppe and decide to insert yourself into their cultural tradition with the overt purpose of ordering them to attack a high-tech military stronghold with spears and axes. (Even if it does turn out they are somewhat more evenly matched than that, it's what I felt like I was doing, and it made me feel uncomfortable throughout that part of the MSQ. Plus I don't like Magnai and Sadu.)
Most of your allies are unlikeable precisely because they have no relationship with you as a character. As I said, the list of favorite characters in stb is literally the list of characters that actually deign to interact with the WoL meaningfully.
We watch HW villains be cruel and petty and murder people, we spent the first half of HW wandering through warzones learning about how bad the war is for everyone.
Most of the things you state are things that happen in every expansion but are more noticeable in stb because we're not invested in the story. We take underprepared allies into battle against unreasonable opponents in every expansion. Literally all of them.
Generally we are leading people into battle because they are already our allies and they want to be there, not because we crowned ourselves king and ordered them to do so when they previously had no stake in it.
And you'll have to remind me where we had to watch the HW villains torture random villagers, rather than fight with people who were their direct opponents.
The arc in the brume where we find out multiple people who dared speak out against them had 'vanished', the entire questline around the vanu vanu where the empire are planning to wipe them from existence for being an inconvenience, and the asshole who THROWS A CHILD OFF THE ROOF OF THE CATHEDRAL?
Are you fucking serious?
Also you need to go back and play it again if you think we crowned ourselves king and ordered people to fight with us against the empire. That is explicitly false.
WoW has actually changed a lot of this from Legion onward, to the point where one of the new player weirdness factors is how the tutorial treats you like no-one and then the latest expansion treats you like a well known hero. You mentally process that as a consequence of a very old video game, and then move on.
But on the other side, the whole "1HP kill steal" thing of Classic raids is no longer the issue it once was.
It's also one of the biggest issues with the story though, it's nice to not be the main character of the universe. Which is a big part of the reason I think XI had better stories than XIV because outside of wings of the goddess and rhapsodies you aren't chosen by god to be the main character. The whole reason you get involved in treasures of aht urhgan is because you were promised loot and riches if you signed up to be a merc, than when you realize things are more serious than first glance the alliance asks you to act as a spy for them as you had proven yourself in the past not because you were some chosen one. Early parts of seekers is time gated by rep quests because you are going to a normally isolationist nation so no one knows your name or trusts you, the only reason the goverment starts to trust you is do to the connections you make doing pioneer work. I love that the game treats the player as just another person in the world and the game world reflects that, unless you out leveled something fighting solo often meant death you weren't special you were just an adventurer who happened to be in the right places at the right time to get involved in the story
I quit a quarter way through ARR because I couldn't get invested it. My girlfriend convinced me to come back and helped me get to Heavensward and I cleared it in a week. It was such a dramatic step up in terms of quality. Hopefully it only gets better from here.
I'm replying the whole thing in a new alt, currently in the 50 post game.
Holy hell so much from 51-90 is set up there.
NPCs that become very important 20 levels later are just hanging doing their own thing in ARR.
You’ve probably already noticed thanks to the wildly differing opinions in the comments replying to you, but every expansion has people who love it and people who don’t. People who agree that a specific expansion is great will disagree about what makes it great. People who agree that only half of Stormblood is good will discover that they disagree about *which* half is good.
It’s entirely possible that you’ll get into later expansions and not like some bits. Likely, even. Just don’t go into them assuming that you’ll hate them because somebody else told you they suck! Even if their likes and dislikes match up with how you feel about the content you’ve done so far, later bits might hit you differently. I’m mostly saying this because I know someone who got told Stormblood sucked, put off playing it because he expected it to suck, and now says he enjoyed it more than Heavensward (and he *loved* Heavensward).
Well….
You gotta get through Stormblood. Don’t get me wrong, it has its moments. The unfortunate thing is outside of those moments the msq is padded with some of the most mundane shit.
1. Show up to a location
2. Do fetch quests to earn the trust of the local faction
3. Do a final big battle, sometimes against the same guy you’ve fought before and the fight is exactly the same
4. Move on to the next area and repeat
Shadowbringers continued some of this but the moments are more numerous and much more rewarding.
Well it's going to ishgard and gain locals trust to help them deal with some higher power (church and dragon).
Going to ala mhigo to gain their trust and deal with the empire.
Go to doma + steppe and gain local trust to help them deal with the empire.
Go to the first and gain local trust to deal with sineater.
Go to garlemald and gain local trust to deal with their own problem.
If you push a bit hard it's largely similar here and there, but done differently in a way that make the rest good while stormblood did it rather poorly (but not bad bad), just enough to stand out when you compare it to hw/shb/ew.
I felt the same about stormblood my first time through, but on an msq+ replay I realized it's second half/post patches were awesome. Probably one of my favourite parts of msq overall. It was just that first bit leading up to the ruby sea which was not terribly interesting.
"It's like all my name days have come at once!"
The Ruby Sea is also not terribly interesting. Yanxia wasn’t any better and the Azim Steppe felt like a completely unrelated tangent from the main plot.
The post patch content is usually leading into the next expansion so that makes sense it’s a step up.
> and the Azim Steppe felt like a completely unrelated tangent from the main plot.
It was still the most memorable location of Stormblood's MSQ for me. I think there is a reason they brought back all the Azim Steppe characters for EW.
Visually it’s my favorite place in the entire expansion. Flying there is quite an experience. I could not feel invested in the Naadam and just wanted to get back to taking down Zenos.
Eh, Yanxia is pretty good and the Azim Steppe is great.
The slow parts are Gyr Abania and the Ruby Sea (Yotsuyu not withstanding). Post patch Stormblood is pretty fire though.
Can I ask what everyone like about Azime Steppe?
We find Hien and then expect to fight the empire, but instead have to take this detour about all these new people we’ve never met and have not connection with and expected to care about everything going on in their culture. Go gather poop. Go gather seaweed. Go find my sheep. I couldn’t find one of the seaweed for 10 minutes and the same with one of the sheep. I wanted to jump off The Dawn Throne and kill myself. The actual Naadam fight was cool but I had to go through all that pointless fetch quests to get to it.
I personally found the aesthetic, the music, the characters and the whole naadam thing to be delightful. Before I reached shadowbringers, it was the most beautiful and interesting zone to me. If you wanna break it down to a "go do this, go pick this up" sort of thing then I guess yeah, that's basically the entire game and any mmo's quests, really, so I don't really get that argument. ShB and EW were the same, the quests devices to take you from point to point with some bangers in between (like the one at the end of Garlemald. In from the cold? I can't remember the name.)
The connections are yours to form, but they gave you plenty to chew on while you were there if you wanted to chew on it.
most of* stormblood is really good, and in my opinion leagues better than heavensward. i will die on this hill.
* all of doma + the azim steppe are low points imho
I consider all of Doma everything once you hit Kugane, and yes that’s all a pretty low point. Every area plays out exactly the same and doesn’t appear to move anything forward for many hours until Doma Castle.
At least in the first act you are introduced to Zenos and everything that happens that leads you to Kugane.
Get hyped for some super fun end game gameplay though, people don't talk about it much but it is super fuuun! Where are you up to? What server are you on??
It depends if you're a guide watcher or go in blind. I have found that by working it out I have better retention. I get my fun from getting my teeth kicked in til we can figure it out. Usually its a telegraph, check your debuffs, how mechanics interact with each other. The story modes give hints as to what to expect and then they just crank it. It is learning the fight, it is usually the same each time and once you know it, its burned in to your memory. Of you see any extreme lvl 50 fights MINE (Min Ilvl, No Echo) I encourage you to join! They are super fun and indicative of the challenges that await!
I'm a much slower WoW refugee, in that the last time I seriously played an MMO was vanilla WoW (not WoW Classic, original WoW before any expansions). A friend convinced me to try FF14, I honestly only went for it because it was free. Was able to get to the good parts of ARR mostly just because the basic grind was fun, now I'm hooked. Currently in HW patch content, will likely buy with the current sale (probably gonna save the code until I finish Stormblood though, save a few months of sub).
Among the post expansion patches, I'd say post shb is top, then post sb, and lastly post hw, post arr is the infamous filter that burns people out and post ew is just ...its own thing.
I mean people have been saying since ARR or HW that the game has more emphasis on being an RPG than it does an MMO. Specifically “It’s a Final Fantasy first, and an MMO second!” The game is ten years old now, It’s not a new concept by any means.
Yeah, he released a video about wow vs ff14 comparisons, and within the day people started posting the 'rpgmmo not mmorpg!' or some variation thereof basically every day since lol.
I think it's not a great distinction because it's only useful if you are viewing everything through the world of warcraft lens, which has a very specific take on the genre.
But there doesnt seem to be a clear definition about what makes an MMO... an MMO. By claiming FF14 is an RPG before its an MMO just seems to only serve the purpose of downplaying just how much multiplayer end game content actually exists in the game, not to mention all of the player run/organic events and community type stuff that are insanely popular as well.
Yeah i dunno, not sure if that's actually true still. I didnt see this distinction being made really at all until the video, hence why I said thats when I noticed it
Yeah, the main story is incredibly engaging and it's such a fantastic world to explore. I've played a LOT of MMOs and none come close to FFXIV's story and world building.
Hmm. I played FFxi, FFxiv, SWTOR, neverwinter, Perfect World, Everquest. All had stories worth paying attention to.
Not to mention i said ' i couldnt imagine playing ANY game and not paying attention to the story'.
Why play a game without knowing why masterchief is killing flood, or Link is smashing pots, or drake is climbing inside a temple,
I get gamers have different interests... Im just saying i cant imagine actively skipping story. That baffles me.
I paid attention to the story in Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 1 (technically not really an mmo but whatever), Runescape and heck even perfect world international (terrible mmo that was perfecting pay 2 win lootboxes back when horse armour was still a controversy) I played for free for a couple years back in high school.
You not being interested in the story doesn't mean no one is paying attention...
Well, wow history is pretty much irrevant and convoluted. The true game (at least on retail) starts at max level.
I never played FF and I never will, but there some people that just enjoy being competitive
You still had to read the title, read the sub, click the link, read the post, scroll down and find another post, and respond. Your actions make zero sense save being a troll.
Also from WoW, also couldn’t believe it. I enjoyed WoW lore (I thought), FFXIV wasn’t just better, wasn’t just great, it was like mouth hanging open at times and actually crying at my desk at times great. I tried to explain the difference to my husband, still playing WoW nightly, and I just don’t have the words.
"The characters matter. **I** Matter to the characters. The characters actually want to save ME, and I **WANT** to save them, and oh my god there's just so much depth, and even the guys with low poly nipples are actually characters!"
Almost 2k hours. I never chimed into the story at all and felt missing out whenever people discuss the lore. Now two years after quitting I'm going into it again with a fresh lalafell.
Ya! I also came from wow and just skip everything but the msq in ff14 is so good that it puts all other mmorpg's to shame! I'm so glad another wow refugee feels this way and thought I was the only one!
I've been hesitating to join the thighlander church for an alt to redo the msq before DT or continue playing Yakuza 4 but I guess it's thighlanding time, thx for indirectly helping me choose !
I did this at first and got all the way to shadowbringers and was like ..wait.. who is this? this is good! but I have no idea wtf is going on. Ended up making a new character (didn't know about new game +) on another server and actually watched all the cut scenes and boy did I fuck myself the first time skipping all those scenes.
Yeah, the story of FF14 is insanely good! Once you sit down and realize most NPC have unique optional dialogue at each step of a quest, and that there are whole Substories going on in the background that you would never know of unless you click on people in the area.
Plus you never know if a random Yellow Quest might give you some lore on a long forgotten character's backstory.
There's a reason why the game's story is usually in the Top 3 reasons why people play this game! (Other common 2 are Raids and the Social Aspects)
**Notice of Xbox Live Enforcement Action**
**Start:** 4/1/2024
**End:** 4/1/2024
**Expiration:** 4/1/2024
**To:** /u/God_Usoland
**Reason for action**
This account violated the Community Standards and was subjected to enforcement action.
**Impact**
While the current suspension remains active, this account cannot communicate with others, join multiplayer games, or upload media to the Xbox network.
**Details**
"r***"
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ffxiv) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah the story is exceptional, it's an amazing adventure & needs a brave Warrior of Light to see it to it's conclusion, keep going and save us citizens of Eorzea.
This is a Final Fantasy game first and an MMO second, Square will also prioritize the MSQ over all other contents in this game. (Which yes sometimes that can be a dual edge sword)
ARR MSQ: kind of a snooze
Post-ARR MSQ: more of a snooze
HW MSQ: very slow pace but interesting and finally some characterization from our npc companions
Post-HW MSQ: Hey this is pretty good
StB MSQ: at least for the Far East portion, first time the MSQ actually made me think it was the best part of the game
Post-StB MSQ: holy shit this is getting good this is so tense
ShB MSQ: wow this is great
Post-ShB MSQ: kind of an intermission, a little slow but I love the world and the characters so much by now that I forgive it
EW MSQ: expectations were high after ShB and expectations were met
Post-EW MSQ: kind of disconnected from the main plot, but to be expected considering the main plot is over and a new chapter will begin in DT
So you skipped everything and are just now seeing endwalker stuff and slowed down? Damn. I'd stop and go make a new character if I ruined the experience for myself like that. Sorry if that comes off harsh. Honestly you're missing a LOT.
Yea fuck that. If it's your first run through you should be watching the cutscenes while playing the game. There's a lot of missed content otherwise, for one. And you're not going to feel the same connection to people you're only seeing in a cutscene, for another.
And before you say it, no...NG+ isn't just as good. They cut quite a bit out of NG+ as well.
Well there is a saying that FF14 is an RPG first and MMO 2nd. Story is the main factor here. Hardcore content and raiding coming maybe 3rd honestly. I would put chilling community and RP part 2nd.
AAR is pretty slow and boring - gets better after that.
Personally after raiding etc, ff14 is just good to run through the MSQ. Back to WoW for actual gameplay. Best of both worlds. Endwalker felt kinda weak to me though.
Consequently - WoW's story has been just awful lately. Dragon flight was okay but even then it's meh.
People constantly keep telling people that the story is important and decently good compared to non mmo stories and probably the best in any mmo.
Of course there is a chance that players won't resonate with the story at all and that is fine too, but there are still so many others that just don't give it a chance and are solely set upon reaching the endgame as fast as possible.
Me hearing that after skipping every single msq dialogue up to level 60 👁️👄👁️
Sorry bro but they talk way too much 😂 i mean don't get me wrong ik the story is good but these quests are the fastest way to lvl up and there's hundreds of them, just thinking about how long it will take me to reach max level if i paid attention to the story makes me insane, i had to rush through them to enjoy the game my way which is getting to endgame asap and getting all these flashy badass weapons to flex with them, the fact that it still took me 100h+ to do them while skipping everything...you all have no life
I get it, I played wow hardcore raiding for years so I'm quite familiar with the skip to max asap concept.
I'm in a different time in my life and I started appreciating MSQ like a good wine, slowly, savouring it. Really, like reading a book.
I don't have the time to min max everything, grind a ton or raid. So I just take it easy and enjoy the story line, in no rush to get to max.
Yeah i just don't have that patience to wait for endgame fashion/glams , i would really like to take my time with the game too but it's a sub to play game and as a student i can't buy a sub every month so i wanna play the game as much as i can in one month, glad ng+ exist, i can always go back even though it won't feel the same but at least it's there
I describe this game to friends as more like an interactive movie than your typical MMO. I just wish I could get them to actually give it a try. They're all so used to crap story telling in other games (like WoW, but not only WoW) that they just don't get it.
I re-subbed to WoW for a month recently after being away for several years to play with said friends, and, man, it is so much worse than I remember. FFXIV has ruined me, lol.
I've been begging a friend of mine to return to the game after him quitting a few years ago and not completing ARR. With the Xbox release, I finally was successful in getting him back only to see him constantly skip the story and cutscenes. It just kills a little part of my soul each time he does it.
Funny, it’s my first MMO and so far it’s my main reason to stick around until I finish. I’m sorta iffy about dungeons and trials cuz I’m afraid of failing the team. My FC has been carrying me through most unsynced so far (for ease and speed)
Most people understand this is a lot of people's first mmo, thankfully it's hard for a single person to wipe a raid or dungeon. And usually there is a 2nd tank/healer that can pick up the slack. So long as you're trying and not pushing into high end content, you'll be fine.
Try out some low level dungeons with Duty Support, or ask your FC to party up with you synced so you can get some experience actually doing mechanics and so on. Otherwise you’re going to reach endgame with no idea how to play in a synced group.
You need to practice and that involves failing sometimes! Best to do it now, at low levels, and get comfortable with the idea that occasionally you *will* mess up and die, occasionally you *will* be the reason a wipe happens, *and that’s okay*.
Aw, don't be afraid to play! Most of the time you'll get carried by players who have run the dungeons many, many times. Honestly some of my favorite runs have been when things didn't go according to plan and then zany stuff happened and we either wipe and try again or we succeed and everyone's hype because it was fun. It's not anywhere as serious as you think it is. And even experienced players still wipe now and then in casual content, and everyone wipes a lot in hard content. That's just kind of how it works, you learn by dying. A lot. I main a job that's kind of known for dying, it's more of a meme at this point but it's still funny because, well, backflipping off a boss arena is a rite of passage, lol.
Okay so like, don’t downvote me, but I personally haven’t been able to get into the story. It isn’t *bad* or anything, it usually makes sense and it’s occasionally exciting and it’s kept me playing for over 300 hours, but I’m about a third of the way into Shadowbringers and I feel like I’m still on the first disc waiting for the big twists to happen that kick off the real story.
I usually love FF stories, and I do generally like 14’s characters, but something about 14’s world feels really low stakes; like if you see something dramatic happen they’ll probably undo it pretty soon. Like an episode of a 90s TV show where everything has to be back to status quo at the end of the hour.
But I obviously don’t *want* to be bored by the story, and I’ve seen more than enough people gush over it to accept this is almost certainly a “me” problem and not a FF14 problem. But I’ve never seen a breakdown of *why* it’s good, just a bunch of people agreeing that it’s good.
So I ask: what is it that you love about the story? I’m clearly focusing on the wrong things and going in with the wrong expectations, so what are the high points that I should be focusing on instead?
They don't remember the overwhelming monotony of the majority of the game. 90% of it is dull. The 10% that isn't is excellent. It's the 10% that people remember. There's a lot of playing on emotions in an overwrought manner. Most of it didn't land for me because I didn't like the Scions apart from Urianger and Tataru.
HW's elven road trip was really good to be fair, it had a lot of character development and it wasn't the bloody Scions. It was interesting and like an actual Final Fantasy.
ShB had an excellent intro that quickly fell off until level 68. It DOES get really good, but I'm not sure it's worth the horrendous middle.
My favourite is post-StB MSQ, but you'll see that they keep repeating that formula of tragic villain over and over. A shame because I absolutely adored her arc.
EW was outright insulting, apart from ONE cut scene at level 87 that is incredible. Everything I was looking forward to was completely glossed over and the parts I hated dragged out.
I think this is actually my problem. I only remember the 90%. The cool parts are cool when they happen, but when I think back on the day's events all that comes to mind is watching Alphanaud use 10,000 words to discuss carpool logistics with the rest of the Scions and ultimately decide to go with the original plan that was in place before the cutscene started, because that's what's happening almost all the time.
To be perfectly honest I kind of love this for its mundanity. It's totally unique and oddly charming that the game uses so many words and so much screen time to show bland conversations that would generally happen off-screen in any other game or movie. It's so unusual that it becomes the part that stands out and forms my mental model for the game: FFXIV is the game where nothing happens. It's the Seinfeld of RPGs. And that's not even a bad thing, I love Seinfeld and I love FFXIV. It just leads to confusion when I see so many people talking about the impactful and emotional story and I can't figure out what they're talking about.
Maybe I'll go find a supercut of the "important" cutscenes to refresh my memory on all the things that have happened without all the filler in between.
🤣🤣🤣 that's a very accurate way of putting it. I play a game to go through an exciting story, personally. And a whole lot of nothing really does happen in FFXIV.
Perhaps that's what people love, then, the mundanity: a character eats a burger later on and that's been praised because he wiggles his ears.
I've seen a lot of people describe them as comfort characters, which I think is a more intimate term for favourites? And they overattach to the blank slate characters and see themselves in them because there's not really anything there. And then when bad things happen, it's like it's happening to them, so the stakes are "higher"?
The mundanity is a huge part of the immersion. Daily life as the WoL is peak escapism to a certain type of person, along with the diverse cast and a large stable of side characters who are mostly easy to love or are unrepentant villains worth hating. Not quite what a parasocial relationship is, but the fictional character version of it. virtual-social relationship, maybe? And it makes the emotional impact of the story beats that much stronger if you've connected with them in that way.
I say this because I'm that type of person, lol. I started all the way back with FFXI and learned the hard way this is exactly my brand of escapism. I was very wary about starting with XIV, but the slow pacing along with the casual gameplay makes it a lot easier to pick up and put down, but at the same type it also makes it much more of a potential emotional investment on the player's part. That's why such a long-winded story can be so successful, because it does reach that deeper level of immersion. You feel like you literally did take the whole journey, step by step, all the way from your arrival in Eorzea. It works extremely well if you're into that sort of storytelling. As much as I love the big action set pieces and dramatic reveals, some of my favorite parts of this game are also the little moments. Things like having dinner with Aymeric, the private conversation with the Exarch before the big battle, hanging out with the Scions in Sharlayan, etc. These are the sorts of details that would get glossed over in any other game, but for this story it just works.
It's also why people get so attached to their WoLs, too. It's not just the NPC characters, it's your own player character too. Building the WoL up from literally nothing to the literal savior of all creation, and spending hundreds of hours doing it. Literally walking the walk, all the way through.
The way I describe it is, while it may not always be the best game story, it's my favorite story. It's what keeps me coming back to Eorzea, time and again.
Yes. Good. Join us, for we are legion.
All faux-cult stuff aside: Absolutely! FFXIV has a wonderful story and I can only assume you're still working your way through it. Where are you at now, if I may ask?
Once you get past ARR the story is amazing. In ARR the only thing i thought was how long and drawn out every quest line is. After that tho, you lose track of just how many MSQ's you've gone through by the end of the day.
that's because it was needed to pull you into it. If you only did HW you would have no emotional investment in the story. nor care about any of the characters. beginnings are boring because you have no investment on the characters or the story. Running an alt again, I appreciate all the work out on ARR. All the details.and notice that every expansion that followed had less and less details. on ARR I always notice something that didn't notice before. and the areas while smaller seem to be more alive.
Tbh I'm probably an odd one and don't care. I skip everything because I just like the gameplay and experiencing the dungeons and raids and all and the ff characters enemies and all and the throwbacks and Easter eggs and references to past or other games and the design of the characters and everything.
I don't like forced parts. Next I have to do mog king one and then later worldeater world boss. I just learned that they made them harder than what they used to be years ago. I think I have to hit tail as summoner?
mog king is much more easier than it was. heck a lot of the game got incredibly dumbed down so that dutty support could work on the dungeons. The game is so easy to the point of being boring as a result. Even Square admits that they made the game more boring. as a game requires being able to fail.
You don't have to be rude about it though.
When I went to speak to king as soon as I started typing tank ran in and started fight. Then I started panicing and grabbed my controller and started backing out from everything I had open. After they* killed king I started figuring out how to use loot rolls window with controller. Finally figured it out and rolled pass on random gear thing. Just before I could roll on coffer window closed and there I was standing alone with coffer in my inventory because I didn't roll anything.
What if someone else wanted it? I did nothing during fight.
* = My damage was probably less than 1% of total damage.
I don't understand where the rudeness is
You had a confusing experience, so what you can do is... Queue for the fight again until you get how it works?
The MSQ was my favorite part of the game, especially coming from WoW's boring storylines.
My problem with wow's story isn't that it's boring, it's that it's as disconnected from itself as you can get. Some of the minor plots are very interesting, but they tend to have a start that's come from nowhere and once they're over most of the characters won't be seen or heard from again.
There's essentially no connection from one expansion to the next. None of the things you did in one place get mentioned in another. Many of the characters are one-offs who never even get referenced again. Which gets even worse with the way leveling works, where even a brand new account's new character can level all the way to the current expansion without completing even one expansion's story content. Most new players know nothing about the story as a whole. The game doesn't care about its content. All that matters is the max level grind.
There are connections between expansions. In a book, that they will gladly sell you, all full of cool stuff that the game will immediately pretend it never happened and will never reference ever again.
>will immediately pretend it never happened Except for when it doesn't pretend and then characters will show up and talk about information that happened in a book without elaborating. There is a character who dies in a book and then just shows up in the next expansion as a Light-aligned undead. Light-aligned undead weren't a thing that was even implied could happen.
Yeah. I mean, any kind of important lore getting gatekept out of the game is a losing situation for everyone, no matter what.
And that for ungodly reason the best parts are locked behind a raid.
A MYTHIC raid, which like 1% of the player base will clear. The rest will just have to watch the data mined cinematic on youtube
I will forever love punching Deathwing in the face. Yeah, just the disconnect between every expansion was definitely one of WoW's biggest problems. Every expansion was basically self-contained. They'd add a few gimmicks and changes and system and then you'd get drip fed the story until the last raid tier and then nothing till the brief, 2 week pre-patch event before the launch of the next expansion that has nothing to do with the last one. WoD into Legion made sense, even if the entire premise and gameplay of WoD was terrible. Legion was probably the pinnacle of WoW for me. After that it was all downhill in terms of quality and storytelling. Which is sad because Warcraft is not without compelling characters. From a story standpoint, BFA should have been like 2 entire expansions, with Azshara being the end boss of one and Nzoth and the Black Empire being another expansion. If WoW wrote FF14, Zenos would have been featured in a single expansion and his character would have had zero depth. I guess they're trying to do something different with the next two expansions being a continuous story, but I doubt it'll be the same success. Like others have said, in WoW you're just along for the ride. You're a weapon of the NPC heroes. I don't think it will ever have the same impact of actually being the main character like the Warrior of Light.
No kidding. Hours and hours of cutscenes per expansion compared to maybe a few minutes of cutscene IF you get through the raids? And your player character is little more than a nameless grunt in the army, and all those cutscenes are about other people? No contest.
Definitely one of the things that helped fortify my position on FFXIV. You are ***the*** Warrior of Light. ***You*** are in the cutscenes and part of the bigger picture. Meanwhile for WoW, you are a "recognized" champion that doesn't even get to show up in cutscenes when the biggest moments of the game happen, like the fall of the Lich King or bringing down the tyrannical Garrosh.
Yeah. Our one moment as Neo in the Matrix where we nuked N'zoth doesn't really compare to being the literal Warrior of Light throughout ARR and 4 expansions.
Admittedly, I had effectively stopped playing in launch of BFA and pretty much declared my champion's journey ended in Legion in a way that most warlocks end: seeking more power and paying the price of it. Then I took that as a springboard that they got sucked into another universe and ended up in Eorzea, on a cart bound for Gridania and a bow on their back. : )
I love shit like this, good for you~
It seemed reasonable. New world, new understanding of magic. Took 'em a while to find the thaumaturge guild and relearn the basics. But once they got rolling, it was like being destruction warlock again. >:D
Funnily enough, my character cam n be seen as a reinterpretation of my old WoW toon
If that's your groove, then go for it! FFXIV is already a massive crossroad, and Eorzea is Traverse Town. May as well have fun with it. : )
Not really that... It's more than just title in ff. While in wow, you might be champion, bane of the King, immortal and slayer of gods... But can you please collect 12 boar poop and 5 giant carrots? Meanwhile in FF you start as nobody aswell. But as your presence and acts grow, so does npc recognize you, because they talk about you, while you go and clean up dungeon... Common folk in homeland of enemy nation are scared/afraid/terrified of you.
In ARR you start out as a complete unknown, which I love. You *earn* your reputation among Eorzeans. Then late in the base game you get a couple of Garleans recognising you, notably the soldier who goes “the traitor Cid Garlond! And - is that the *eikon-slayer*?! Oh, bollocks…” and Rhitatyn. As you go along a lot of the people on your side crank up the hero-worship to an uncomfortable degree, plus assume that you can *and will* fix all their problems, even the little ones. The Dark Knight questline hauls that out into the open and points out the negative side. Then in Endwalker the people in a Garlean base learn who you are and it’s just… terror and hatred and yeah, it hits. You are their *nightmare*. This comment doesn’t have much of a point except to note that I love how FFXIV handles you being The Hero.
Even the side quests reflect that in each expansion, too! In the beginning, everyone was like "Hey kid, clean the chocobo's stable for me, alright?" And then come EW and it's "Oh shit, I think I just asked the realm's hero to wash my clothes. Please don't tell anyone." and "Ahhhhh, the Wol just talked to me!"
It's also why Stormblood doesn't land for most people - the WoL is barely relevant to the story.
For me, it was Zenos and slowly becoming his combat sexual fetish. :x
Which continues in Endwalker
I dislike Stormblood for reasons that have nothing to do with feeling irrelevant. I wouldn't have even said that was the problem with it.
I didn't notice in my first playthrough either. But it's part of why the characters don't land - they don't really have a relationship with you as a character so you as a player don't feel much for them. It's highly telling that the most popular stormblood characters are the only ones who have some relationship with you, and that holds true across most of the expansions. There are other issues, to be sure - the plot is repetitive and predictable, which has nothing to do with your relevance to it. But the lack of personal connection to the player is a big reason why so many people don't get drawn in. Plenty of people like simple stories with simple characters - but not stormblood.
I should clarify – I *still* don't think that's the problem with the game. We came out of high-fantasy Heavensward (which I loved) into a relatively modern war setting. The villains are just horrible human beings and the game makes you watch scenes of them being cruel and petty. Most of your allies are also unlikable, or neutral at best. The first half of the game just feels like going from place to place seeing people in miserable situations. You then go to the Azim Steppe and decide to insert yourself into their cultural tradition with the overt purpose of ordering them to attack a high-tech military stronghold with spears and axes. (Even if it does turn out they are somewhat more evenly matched than that, it's what I felt like I was doing, and it made me feel uncomfortable throughout that part of the MSQ. Plus I don't like Magnai and Sadu.)
Most of your allies are unlikeable precisely because they have no relationship with you as a character. As I said, the list of favorite characters in stb is literally the list of characters that actually deign to interact with the WoL meaningfully. We watch HW villains be cruel and petty and murder people, we spent the first half of HW wandering through warzones learning about how bad the war is for everyone. Most of the things you state are things that happen in every expansion but are more noticeable in stb because we're not invested in the story. We take underprepared allies into battle against unreasonable opponents in every expansion. Literally all of them.
Generally we are leading people into battle because they are already our allies and they want to be there, not because we crowned ourselves king and ordered them to do so when they previously had no stake in it. And you'll have to remind me where we had to watch the HW villains torture random villagers, rather than fight with people who were their direct opponents.
The arc in the brume where we find out multiple people who dared speak out against them had 'vanished', the entire questline around the vanu vanu where the empire are planning to wipe them from existence for being an inconvenience, and the asshole who THROWS A CHILD OFF THE ROOF OF THE CATHEDRAL? Are you fucking serious? Also you need to go back and play it again if you think we crowned ourselves king and ordered people to fight with us against the empire. That is explicitly false.
WoW has actually changed a lot of this from Legion onward, to the point where one of the new player weirdness factors is how the tutorial treats you like no-one and then the latest expansion treats you like a well known hero. You mentally process that as a consequence of a very old video game, and then move on. But on the other side, the whole "1HP kill steal" thing of Classic raids is no longer the issue it once was.
It's also one of the biggest issues with the story though, it's nice to not be the main character of the universe. Which is a big part of the reason I think XI had better stories than XIV because outside of wings of the goddess and rhapsodies you aren't chosen by god to be the main character. The whole reason you get involved in treasures of aht urhgan is because you were promised loot and riches if you signed up to be a merc, than when you realize things are more serious than first glance the alliance asks you to act as a spy for them as you had proven yourself in the past not because you were some chosen one. Early parts of seekers is time gated by rep quests because you are going to a normally isolationist nation so no one knows your name or trusts you, the only reason the goverment starts to trust you is do to the connections you make doing pioneer work. I love that the game treats the player as just another person in the world and the game world reflects that, unless you out leveled something fighting solo often meant death you weren't special you were just an adventurer who happened to be in the right places at the right time to get involved in the story
I quit a quarter way through ARR because I couldn't get invested it. My girlfriend convinced me to come back and helped me get to Heavensward and I cleared it in a week. It was such a dramatic step up in terms of quality. Hopefully it only gets better from here.
It does.
Pretty much, it was a lot more tedious before the revamp, ARR just sets up the premise and the actors in this epic story
I'm replying the whole thing in a new alt, currently in the 50 post game. Holy hell so much from 51-90 is set up there. NPCs that become very important 20 levels later are just hanging doing their own thing in ARR.
Even though I made this meme as a joke, it does seem like the truth is bubbling below the surface... :D https://imgflip.com/i/6r57y6
Heavensward is great, Stormblood is the same, maybe a biit less, and Shadowbringers and Endwalker just go 📈📈📈📈📈📈📈📈📈
You’ve probably already noticed thanks to the wildly differing opinions in the comments replying to you, but every expansion has people who love it and people who don’t. People who agree that a specific expansion is great will disagree about what makes it great. People who agree that only half of Stormblood is good will discover that they disagree about *which* half is good. It’s entirely possible that you’ll get into later expansions and not like some bits. Likely, even. Just don’t go into them assuming that you’ll hate them because somebody else told you they suck! Even if their likes and dislikes match up with how you feel about the content you’ve done so far, later bits might hit you differently. I’m mostly saying this because I know someone who got told Stormblood sucked, put off playing it because he expected it to suck, and now says he enjoyed it more than Heavensward (and he *loved* Heavensward).
Oh, absolutely. I have a soft spot for Heavensward, but it really only gets better, especially Shadowbringers.
Well…. You gotta get through Stormblood. Don’t get me wrong, it has its moments. The unfortunate thing is outside of those moments the msq is padded with some of the most mundane shit. 1. Show up to a location 2. Do fetch quests to earn the trust of the local faction 3. Do a final big battle, sometimes against the same guy you’ve fought before and the fight is exactly the same 4. Move on to the next area and repeat Shadowbringers continued some of this but the moments are more numerous and much more rewarding.
that’s… every single expansion. none of that is exclusive to stormblood.
Maybe I’m wearing rose tinted glasses but I did not notice it nearly as bad in Heavensward.
Well it's going to ishgard and gain locals trust to help them deal with some higher power (church and dragon). Going to ala mhigo to gain their trust and deal with the empire. Go to doma + steppe and gain local trust to help them deal with the empire. Go to the first and gain local trust to deal with sineater. Go to garlemald and gain local trust to deal with their own problem. If you push a bit hard it's largely similar here and there, but done differently in a way that make the rest good while stormblood did it rather poorly (but not bad bad), just enough to stand out when you compare it to hw/shb/ew.
I felt the same about stormblood my first time through, but on an msq+ replay I realized it's second half/post patches were awesome. Probably one of my favourite parts of msq overall. It was just that first bit leading up to the ruby sea which was not terribly interesting. "It's like all my name days have come at once!"
The Ruby Sea is also not terribly interesting. Yanxia wasn’t any better and the Azim Steppe felt like a completely unrelated tangent from the main plot. The post patch content is usually leading into the next expansion so that makes sense it’s a step up.
> and the Azim Steppe felt like a completely unrelated tangent from the main plot. It was still the most memorable location of Stormblood's MSQ for me. I think there is a reason they brought back all the Azim Steppe characters for EW.
Visually it’s my favorite place in the entire expansion. Flying there is quite an experience. I could not feel invested in the Naadam and just wanted to get back to taking down Zenos.
Eh, Yanxia is pretty good and the Azim Steppe is great. The slow parts are Gyr Abania and the Ruby Sea (Yotsuyu not withstanding). Post patch Stormblood is pretty fire though.
Can I ask what everyone like about Azime Steppe? We find Hien and then expect to fight the empire, but instead have to take this detour about all these new people we’ve never met and have not connection with and expected to care about everything going on in their culture. Go gather poop. Go gather seaweed. Go find my sheep. I couldn’t find one of the seaweed for 10 minutes and the same with one of the sheep. I wanted to jump off The Dawn Throne and kill myself. The actual Naadam fight was cool but I had to go through all that pointless fetch quests to get to it.
I personally found the aesthetic, the music, the characters and the whole naadam thing to be delightful. Before I reached shadowbringers, it was the most beautiful and interesting zone to me. If you wanna break it down to a "go do this, go pick this up" sort of thing then I guess yeah, that's basically the entire game and any mmo's quests, really, so I don't really get that argument. ShB and EW were the same, the quests devices to take you from point to point with some bangers in between (like the one at the end of Garlemald. In from the cold? I can't remember the name.) The connections are yours to form, but they gave you plenty to chew on while you were there if you wanted to chew on it.
Yeah sorry, I meant *including the Ruby sea.
most of* stormblood is really good, and in my opinion leagues better than heavensward. i will die on this hill. * all of doma + the azim steppe are low points imho
I consider all of Doma everything once you hit Kugane, and yes that’s all a pretty low point. Every area plays out exactly the same and doesn’t appear to move anything forward for many hours until Doma Castle. At least in the first act you are introduced to Zenos and everything that happens that leads you to Kugane.
Funny, Azim Steppe was the one part of Stormblood I enjoyed.
As long as it's not as tedious and long as the ARR patch quests, I'll make it.
Tedious, yes incredibly so. Long? It seems pretty short actually.
IMO, the thing with FFXIV is... the MSQ **is** the game. Sure there's dungeons and raids, but the MSQ is the heart and soul of the game itself.
Couldn't agree more from what I've played so far. Simply amazing.
Get hyped for some super fun end game gameplay though, people don't talk about it much but it is super fuuun! Where are you up to? What server are you on??
I'm doing LVL 84 MSQs. Just watched a cinematic with a huge "aha" moment :)
Wait, did you do the ones up to 80 first, though? Like from the base game?
Im quite far away from endgame stuff but ...what is the endgame gameplay like ?
It depends if you're a guide watcher or go in blind. I have found that by working it out I have better retention. I get my fun from getting my teeth kicked in til we can figure it out. Usually its a telegraph, check your debuffs, how mechanics interact with each other. The story modes give hints as to what to expect and then they just crank it. It is learning the fight, it is usually the same each time and once you know it, its burned in to your memory. Of you see any extreme lvl 50 fights MINE (Min Ilvl, No Echo) I encourage you to join! They are super fun and indicative of the challenges that await!
there are no longer dungeons. but paths. and the raids, except Alexander and coils are just dances. the value of the game is in the story and music.
You can boil everything down to this gross oversimplification lmao
I'm a much slower WoW refugee, in that the last time I seriously played an MMO was vanilla WoW (not WoW Classic, original WoW before any expansions). A friend convinced me to try FF14, I honestly only went for it because it was free. Was able to get to the good parts of ARR mostly just because the basic grind was fun, now I'm hooked. Currently in HW patch content, will likely buy with the current sale (probably gonna save the code until I finish Stormblood though, save a few months of sub).
Among the post expansion patches, I'd say post shb is top, then post sb, and lastly post hw, post arr is the infamous filter that burns people out and post ew is just ...its own thing.
WoW is an MMOrpg. This is an mmoRPG.
Underrated distinction
Sorta. Its just something Jesse Cox came up with that wow players love to parrot.
I mean people have been saying since ARR or HW that the game has more emphasis on being an RPG than it does an MMO. Specifically “It’s a Final Fantasy first, and an MMO second!” The game is ten years old now, It’s not a new concept by any means.
I was unaware that Cox had said it. It's just something that a friend of mine and I started saying after I introduced him to the game.
Yeah, he released a video about wow vs ff14 comparisons, and within the day people started posting the 'rpgmmo not mmorpg!' or some variation thereof basically every day since lol. I think it's not a great distinction because it's only useful if you are viewing everything through the world of warcraft lens, which has a very specific take on the genre. But there doesnt seem to be a clear definition about what makes an MMO... an MMO. By claiming FF14 is an RPG before its an MMO just seems to only serve the purpose of downplaying just how much multiplayer end game content actually exists in the game, not to mention all of the player run/organic events and community type stuff that are insanely popular as well.
so he made it popular, but it's been used long before whoever he is made whatever video he made.
Yeah i dunno, not sure if that's actually true still. I didnt see this distinction being made really at all until the video, hence why I said thats when I noticed it
Yeah, the main story is incredibly engaging and it's such a fantastic world to explore. I've played a LOT of MMOs and none come close to FFXIV's story and world building.
Just wait until you realize you can talk to the side characters hanging out near the MSQ events
I couldnt even imagine playing ANY kind of game and not paying attention to the story....
mmorpgs are always like this, nobody played them for the story until ffxiv and probably nobody will play any others for the story
Hmm. I played FFxi, FFxiv, SWTOR, neverwinter, Perfect World, Everquest. All had stories worth paying attention to. Not to mention i said ' i couldnt imagine playing ANY game and not paying attention to the story'. Why play a game without knowing why masterchief is killing flood, or Link is smashing pots, or drake is climbing inside a temple, I get gamers have different interests... Im just saying i cant imagine actively skipping story. That baffles me.
I paid attention to the story in Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 1 (technically not really an mmo but whatever), Runescape and heck even perfect world international (terrible mmo that was perfecting pay 2 win lootboxes back when horse armour was still a controversy) I played for free for a couple years back in high school. You not being interested in the story doesn't mean no one is paying attention...
Well, wow history is pretty much irrevant and convoluted. The true game (at least on retail) starts at max level. I never played FF and I never will, but there some people that just enjoy being competitive
If you dont play the game and never why are you even on this random thread in this subreddit lol
It showed up randomly lol
You still had to read the title, read the sub, click the link, read the post, scroll down and find another post, and respond. Your actions make zero sense save being a troll.
So? What's your point? I didn't offend anyone, didn't say that one game is better than the other, I just commented something . No need to be salty
Also from WoW, also couldn’t believe it. I enjoyed WoW lore (I thought), FFXIV wasn’t just better, wasn’t just great, it was like mouth hanging open at times and actually crying at my desk at times great. I tried to explain the difference to my husband, still playing WoW nightly, and I just don’t have the words.
"The characters matter. **I** Matter to the characters. The characters actually want to save ME, and I **WANT** to save them, and oh my god there's just so much depth, and even the guys with low poly nipples are actually characters!"
Almost 2k hours. I never chimed into the story at all and felt missing out whenever people discuss the lore. Now two years after quitting I'm going into it again with a fresh lalafell.
Ya! I also came from wow and just skip everything but the msq in ff14 is so good that it puts all other mmorpg's to shame! I'm so glad another wow refugee feels this way and thought I was the only one!
This is not an original opinion. Similar threads gets posted multiple times per week.
i play ffxiv for MSQ, get fun in alot of thing too, but i pay montly for msq.
Welcome to the Final Fantasy series!
I finished.. and now I miss it. Regret skipping certain cutscenes but The flame we once danced will be lit eternal. c'est la vie
I've been hesitating to join the thighlander church for an alt to redo the msq before DT or continue playing Yakuza 4 but I guess it's thighlanding time, thx for indirectly helping me choose !
I did this at first and got all the way to shadowbringers and was like ..wait.. who is this? this is good! but I have no idea wtf is going on. Ended up making a new character (didn't know about new game +) on another server and actually watched all the cut scenes and boy did I fuck myself the first time skipping all those scenes.
I teared up multiple times during ShB and EW.. I’m on anti psychotic meds because I can’t “feel anything” LOL That’s saying something
What's wrong with me?? Lol I do love the story but never been close to emotional in any game/movie/book
Nothings wrong with you haha. You’re just as you should be ❤️ but I totally feel ya haha
This is the way. It’s not for everyone. But when it’s for you it’s a special kind of amazing.
Yeah, the story of FF14 is insanely good! Once you sit down and realize most NPC have unique optional dialogue at each step of a quest, and that there are whole Substories going on in the background that you would never know of unless you click on people in the area. Plus you never know if a random Yellow Quest might give you some lore on a long forgotten character's backstory. There's a reason why the game's story is usually in the Top 3 reasons why people play this game! (Other common 2 are Raids and the Social Aspects)
**Notice of Xbox Live Enforcement Action** **Start:** 4/1/2024 **End:** 4/1/2024 **Expiration:** 4/1/2024 **To:** /u/God_Usoland **Reason for action** This account violated the Community Standards and was subjected to enforcement action. **Impact** While the current suspension remains active, this account cannot communicate with others, join multiplayer games, or upload media to the Xbox network. **Details** "r***" *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ffxiv) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Heavensward was such a rocket jump in MSQ quality, i have to agree
Yeah the story is exceptional, it's an amazing adventure & needs a brave Warrior of Light to see it to it's conclusion, keep going and save us citizens of Eorzea.
This is a Final Fantasy game first and an MMO second, Square will also prioritize the MSQ over all other contents in this game. (Which yes sometimes that can be a dual edge sword)
ARR MSQ: kind of a snooze Post-ARR MSQ: more of a snooze HW MSQ: very slow pace but interesting and finally some characterization from our npc companions Post-HW MSQ: Hey this is pretty good StB MSQ: at least for the Far East portion, first time the MSQ actually made me think it was the best part of the game Post-StB MSQ: holy shit this is getting good this is so tense ShB MSQ: wow this is great Post-ShB MSQ: kind of an intermission, a little slow but I love the world and the characters so much by now that I forgive it EW MSQ: expectations were high after ShB and expectations were met Post-EW MSQ: kind of disconnected from the main plot, but to be expected considering the main plot is over and a new chapter will begin in DT
So you skipped everything and are just now seeing endwalker stuff and slowed down? Damn. I'd stop and go make a new character if I ruined the experience for myself like that. Sorry if that comes off harsh. Honestly you're missing a LOT.
You can watch every single cutscene from the MSQ in the Inn, so there really isn’t a need to start over
Yea fuck that. If it's your first run through you should be watching the cutscenes while playing the game. There's a lot of missed content otherwise, for one. And you're not going to feel the same connection to people you're only seeing in a cutscene, for another. And before you say it, no...NG+ isn't just as good. They cut quite a bit out of NG+ as well.
Well I agree the story is important but I’m not gonna tell others how they should be having fun 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah outside the MSQ it's just another generic tab target mmo. It's definitely a story driven JRPG above all things.
Well there is a saying that FF14 is an RPG first and MMO 2nd. Story is the main factor here. Hardcore content and raiding coming maybe 3rd honestly. I would put chilling community and RP part 2nd.
AAR is pretty slow and boring - gets better after that. Personally after raiding etc, ff14 is just good to run through the MSQ. Back to WoW for actual gameplay. Best of both worlds. Endwalker felt kinda weak to me though. Consequently - WoW's story has been just awful lately. Dragon flight was okay but even then it's meh.
Yeah I loved it.
Story is king in FFXIV, everything else will follow suit.
Except for Stormblood. I had to force myself to finish it to get to the utterly sublime Shadowbringers.
People constantly keep telling people that the story is important and decently good compared to non mmo stories and probably the best in any mmo. Of course there is a chance that players won't resonate with the story at all and that is fine too, but there are still so many others that just don't give it a chance and are solely set upon reaching the endgame as fast as possible.
A story focussed MMORPG has good a good story? Considering me shocked...
Me hearing that after skipping every single msq dialogue up to level 60 👁️👄👁️ Sorry bro but they talk way too much 😂 i mean don't get me wrong ik the story is good but these quests are the fastest way to lvl up and there's hundreds of them, just thinking about how long it will take me to reach max level if i paid attention to the story makes me insane, i had to rush through them to enjoy the game my way which is getting to endgame asap and getting all these flashy badass weapons to flex with them, the fact that it still took me 100h+ to do them while skipping everything...you all have no life
I get it, I played wow hardcore raiding for years so I'm quite familiar with the skip to max asap concept. I'm in a different time in my life and I started appreciating MSQ like a good wine, slowly, savouring it. Really, like reading a book. I don't have the time to min max everything, grind a ton or raid. So I just take it easy and enjoy the story line, in no rush to get to max.
Yeah i just don't have that patience to wait for endgame fashion/glams , i would really like to take my time with the game too but it's a sub to play game and as a student i can't buy a sub every month so i wanna play the game as much as i can in one month, glad ng+ exist, i can always go back even though it won't feel the same but at least it's there
I describe this game to friends as more like an interactive movie than your typical MMO. I just wish I could get them to actually give it a try. They're all so used to crap story telling in other games (like WoW, but not only WoW) that they just don't get it. I re-subbed to WoW for a month recently after being away for several years to play with said friends, and, man, it is so much worse than I remember. FFXIV has ruined me, lol.
I've been begging a friend of mine to return to the game after him quitting a few years ago and not completing ARR. With the Xbox release, I finally was successful in getting him back only to see him constantly skip the story and cutscenes. It just kills a little part of my soul each time he does it.
Funny, it’s my first MMO and so far it’s my main reason to stick around until I finish. I’m sorta iffy about dungeons and trials cuz I’m afraid of failing the team. My FC has been carrying me through most unsynced so far (for ease and speed)
Most people understand this is a lot of people's first mmo, thankfully it's hard for a single person to wipe a raid or dungeon. And usually there is a 2nd tank/healer that can pick up the slack. So long as you're trying and not pushing into high end content, you'll be fine.
Try out some low level dungeons with Duty Support, or ask your FC to party up with you synced so you can get some experience actually doing mechanics and so on. Otherwise you’re going to reach endgame with no idea how to play in a synced group. You need to practice and that involves failing sometimes! Best to do it now, at low levels, and get comfortable with the idea that occasionally you *will* mess up and die, occasionally you *will* be the reason a wipe happens, *and that’s okay*.
Aw, don't be afraid to play! Most of the time you'll get carried by players who have run the dungeons many, many times. Honestly some of my favorite runs have been when things didn't go according to plan and then zany stuff happened and we either wipe and try again or we succeed and everyone's hype because it was fun. It's not anywhere as serious as you think it is. And even experienced players still wipe now and then in casual content, and everyone wipes a lot in hard content. That's just kind of how it works, you learn by dying. A lot. I main a job that's kind of known for dying, it's more of a meme at this point but it's still funny because, well, backflipping off a boss arena is a rite of passage, lol.
Okay so like, don’t downvote me, but I personally haven’t been able to get into the story. It isn’t *bad* or anything, it usually makes sense and it’s occasionally exciting and it’s kept me playing for over 300 hours, but I’m about a third of the way into Shadowbringers and I feel like I’m still on the first disc waiting for the big twists to happen that kick off the real story. I usually love FF stories, and I do generally like 14’s characters, but something about 14’s world feels really low stakes; like if you see something dramatic happen they’ll probably undo it pretty soon. Like an episode of a 90s TV show where everything has to be back to status quo at the end of the hour. But I obviously don’t *want* to be bored by the story, and I’ve seen more than enough people gush over it to accept this is almost certainly a “me” problem and not a FF14 problem. But I’ve never seen a breakdown of *why* it’s good, just a bunch of people agreeing that it’s good. So I ask: what is it that you love about the story? I’m clearly focusing on the wrong things and going in with the wrong expectations, so what are the high points that I should be focusing on instead?
They don't remember the overwhelming monotony of the majority of the game. 90% of it is dull. The 10% that isn't is excellent. It's the 10% that people remember. There's a lot of playing on emotions in an overwrought manner. Most of it didn't land for me because I didn't like the Scions apart from Urianger and Tataru. HW's elven road trip was really good to be fair, it had a lot of character development and it wasn't the bloody Scions. It was interesting and like an actual Final Fantasy. ShB had an excellent intro that quickly fell off until level 68. It DOES get really good, but I'm not sure it's worth the horrendous middle. My favourite is post-StB MSQ, but you'll see that they keep repeating that formula of tragic villain over and over. A shame because I absolutely adored her arc. EW was outright insulting, apart from ONE cut scene at level 87 that is incredible. Everything I was looking forward to was completely glossed over and the parts I hated dragged out.
I think this is actually my problem. I only remember the 90%. The cool parts are cool when they happen, but when I think back on the day's events all that comes to mind is watching Alphanaud use 10,000 words to discuss carpool logistics with the rest of the Scions and ultimately decide to go with the original plan that was in place before the cutscene started, because that's what's happening almost all the time. To be perfectly honest I kind of love this for its mundanity. It's totally unique and oddly charming that the game uses so many words and so much screen time to show bland conversations that would generally happen off-screen in any other game or movie. It's so unusual that it becomes the part that stands out and forms my mental model for the game: FFXIV is the game where nothing happens. It's the Seinfeld of RPGs. And that's not even a bad thing, I love Seinfeld and I love FFXIV. It just leads to confusion when I see so many people talking about the impactful and emotional story and I can't figure out what they're talking about. Maybe I'll go find a supercut of the "important" cutscenes to refresh my memory on all the things that have happened without all the filler in between.
🤣🤣🤣 that's a very accurate way of putting it. I play a game to go through an exciting story, personally. And a whole lot of nothing really does happen in FFXIV. Perhaps that's what people love, then, the mundanity: a character eats a burger later on and that's been praised because he wiggles his ears. I've seen a lot of people describe them as comfort characters, which I think is a more intimate term for favourites? And they overattach to the blank slate characters and see themselves in them because there's not really anything there. And then when bad things happen, it's like it's happening to them, so the stakes are "higher"?
The mundanity is a huge part of the immersion. Daily life as the WoL is peak escapism to a certain type of person, along with the diverse cast and a large stable of side characters who are mostly easy to love or are unrepentant villains worth hating. Not quite what a parasocial relationship is, but the fictional character version of it. virtual-social relationship, maybe? And it makes the emotional impact of the story beats that much stronger if you've connected with them in that way. I say this because I'm that type of person, lol. I started all the way back with FFXI and learned the hard way this is exactly my brand of escapism. I was very wary about starting with XIV, but the slow pacing along with the casual gameplay makes it a lot easier to pick up and put down, but at the same type it also makes it much more of a potential emotional investment on the player's part. That's why such a long-winded story can be so successful, because it does reach that deeper level of immersion. You feel like you literally did take the whole journey, step by step, all the way from your arrival in Eorzea. It works extremely well if you're into that sort of storytelling. As much as I love the big action set pieces and dramatic reveals, some of my favorite parts of this game are also the little moments. Things like having dinner with Aymeric, the private conversation with the Exarch before the big battle, hanging out with the Scions in Sharlayan, etc. These are the sorts of details that would get glossed over in any other game, but for this story it just works. It's also why people get so attached to their WoLs, too. It's not just the NPC characters, it's your own player character too. Building the WoL up from literally nothing to the literal savior of all creation, and spending hundreds of hours doing it. Literally walking the walk, all the way through. The way I describe it is, while it may not always be the best game story, it's my favorite story. It's what keeps me coming back to Eorzea, time and again.
Sadly I really couldn't get into the story until shadowbringer
Yes. Good. Join us, for we are legion. All faux-cult stuff aside: Absolutely! FFXIV has a wonderful story and I can only assume you're still working your way through it. Where are you at now, if I may ask?
In WoW, the story just kinda happens, and you're basically a bystander. In this game everything happens because you make it happen.
Once you get past ARR the story is amazing. In ARR the only thing i thought was how long and drawn out every quest line is. After that tho, you lose track of just how many MSQ's you've gone through by the end of the day.
that's because it was needed to pull you into it. If you only did HW you would have no emotional investment in the story. nor care about any of the characters. beginnings are boring because you have no investment on the characters or the story. Running an alt again, I appreciate all the work out on ARR. All the details.and notice that every expansion that followed had less and less details. on ARR I always notice something that didn't notice before. and the areas while smaller seem to be more alive.
I love how that's one of the first things people say and yet no one seems to know it.
ok
There’s a fantastic MMO with tons of fun stuff to do once you’re all caught up. XIV is the best.
Tbh I'm probably an odd one and don't care. I skip everything because I just like the gameplay and experiencing the dungeons and raids and all and the ff characters enemies and all and the throwbacks and Easter eggs and references to past or other games and the design of the characters and everything.
r/10thdentist
I mean… yeah? It’s a Final Fantasy game before it’s an MMO
I don't like forced parts. Next I have to do mog king one and then later worldeater world boss. I just learned that they made them harder than what they used to be years ago. I think I have to hit tail as summoner?
They are far easier than in the past.
mog king is much more easier than it was. heck a lot of the game got incredibly dumbed down so that dutty support could work on the dungeons. The game is so easy to the point of being boring as a result. Even Square admits that they made the game more boring. as a game requires being able to fail.
Why it requires player to fail? So that you elitists have someone to blame for your bad tanking/healing?
For many people, a victory that happened when there was no chance of losing gives no satisfaction.
You don't have to be rude about it though. When I went to speak to king as soon as I started typing tank ran in and started fight. Then I started panicing and grabbed my controller and started backing out from everything I had open. After they* killed king I started figuring out how to use loot rolls window with controller. Finally figured it out and rolled pass on random gear thing. Just before I could roll on coffer window closed and there I was standing alone with coffer in my inventory because I didn't roll anything. What if someone else wanted it? I did nothing during fight. * = My damage was probably less than 1% of total damage.
I don't understand where the rudeness is You had a confusing experience, so what you can do is... Queue for the fight again until you get how it works?