I bought the game on sale on Steam to give it a shot yesterday. I honestly have the same feeling about ARR as I did about The Secret World...these games would both be great if I didn't hate the combat so much. I don't really care how good the game is at the end because if I don't like the combat mechanics, I'm never going to play it enough to get that far.
I played ~10 hours of ARR so far, and every single fight is literally me pushing 2 buttons with a long global cooldown. I'm supposed to just keep doing that until the game supposedly gets fun at some point? I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
For people that like the combat in ARR or The Secret World, I can see them rating the games as high as they do. For me, both of them I would give maybe a 7/10, good games with combat so bad that I can't stand to play them for long. Since the majority of what you do in MMOs is combat, if that isn't fun to me, it doesn't really matter what else the game has going for it.
There are much worse MMOs that flopped and went out of business, but I had a lot more fun playing them than ARR and TSW because the combat was fun to me...Tabula Rasa for instance. Even Defiance, not a good MMO, but the combat and driving around in my Dodge Challenger kept me entertained for longer than ARR has even though as an overall product, ARR is much better than Defiance.
To each their own though, I'm sure a lot of people like the ARR combat and I could easily see them giving the game a 9/10 as a result. It's a solid, polished product.
I bought the game on sale on Steam to give it a shot yesterday. I honestly have the same feeling about ARR as I did about The Secret World...these games would both be great if I didn't hate the combat so much. I don't really care how good the game is at the end because if I don't like the combat mechanics, I'm never going to play it enough to get that far.
I played ~10 hours of ARR so far, and every single fight is literally me pushing 2 buttons with a long global cooldown. I'm supposed to just keep doing that until the game supposedly gets fun at some point? I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
For people that like the combat in ARR or The Secret World, I can see them rating the games as high as they do. For me, both of them I would give maybe a 7/10, good games with combat so bad that I can't stand to play them for long. Since the majority of what you do in MMOs is combat, if that isn't fun to me, it doesn't really matter what else the game has going for it.
There are much worse MMOs that flopped and went out of business, but I had a lot more fun playing them than ARR and TSW because the combat was fun to me...Tabula Rasa for instance. Even Defiance, not a good MMO, but the combat and driving around in my Dodge Challenger kept me entertained for longer than ARR has even though as an overall product, ARR is much better than Defiance.
To each their own though, I'm sure a lot of people like the ARR combat and I could easily see them giving the game a 9/10 as a result. It's a solid, polished product.
The combat is purposefully designed to be simple and "boring" at FIRST. Your question might be, why the hell would you purposefully make it so simple or Tab Targe Wow-esq? Because YoshiP wanted this game to be a Final Fantasy first and an mmo second. He wanted people who love FF but have never tried an MMO to get into it without being scared away from MMO mechanics.
What starts out slow becomes faster and more complicated teh closer you get to end game. You start getting abilities off the global cooldown. You get to pick 5 additional abilities from other classes also, most of the time OFF the global cooldown. What this means for classes like MNK and NINJA, is that you're CONSTANTLY pressing buttons between your 2.0 gCD.
With other classes it is not as exciting... but you can't separate the combat and the content. There is so much movement and coordination involved end game that it's hard to do your "rotation." There is fun combat to be had, but you have to realize it doesn't open up till later. BTW.... 99% of your time in a long term mmo is spent after you reach the cap.
So it takes you like a week or two to get to lvl 30 and you might play 2 years at lvl cap.
This whole "combat is boring" is so overblown. If it's soooo horrible and you can't make yourself et to 30, then this game isn't for you. But if this game has enough other awesome things, you owe it to yourself to get at least one character doing some of the primal fights, dungeons and raids.
FFXIV is like a fine wine.... it gets better and better with time.
I bought the game on sale on Steam to give it a shot yesterday. I honestly have the same feeling about ARR as I did about The Secret World...these games would both be great if I didn't hate the combat so much. I don't really care how good the game is at the end because if I don't like the combat mechanics, I'm never going to play it enough to get that far.
I played ~10 hours of ARR so far, and every single fight is literally me pushing 2 buttons with a long global cooldown. I'm supposed to just keep doing that until the game supposedly gets fun at some point? I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
For people that like the combat in ARR or The Secret World, I can see them rating the games as high as they do. For me, both of them I would give maybe a 7/10, good games with combat so bad that I can't stand to play them for long. Since the majority of what you do in MMOs is combat, if that isn't fun to me, it doesn't really matter what else the game has going for it.
There are much worse MMOs that flopped and went out of business, but I had a lot more fun playing them than ARR and TSW because the combat was fun to me...Tabula Rasa for instance. Even Defiance, not a good MMO, but the combat and driving around in my Dodge Challenger kept me entertained for longer than ARR has even though as an overall product, ARR is much better than Defiance.
To each their own though, I'm sure a lot of people like the ARR combat and I could easily see them giving the game a 9/10 as a result. It's a solid, polished product.
The combat is purposefully designed to be simple and "boring" at FIRST. Your question might be, why the hell would you purposefully make it so simple or Tab Targe Wow-esq? Because YoshiP wanted this game to be a Final Fantasy first and an mmo second. He wanted people who love FF but have never tried an MMO to get into it without being scared away from MMO mechanics.
What starts out slow becomes faster and more complicated teh closer you get to end game. You start getting abilities off the global cooldown. You get to pick 5 additional abilities from other classes also, most of the time OFF the global cooldown. What this means for classes like MNK and NINJA, is that you're CONSTANTLY pressing buttons between your 2.0 gCD.
With other classes it is not as exciting... but you can't separate the combat and the content. There is so much movement and coordination involved end game that it's hard to do your "rotation." There is fun combat to be had, but you have to realize it doesn't open up till later. BTW.... 99% of your time in a long term mmo is spent after you reach the cap.
So it takes you like a week or two to get to lvl 30 and you might play 2 years at lvl cap.
This whole "combat is boring" is so overblown. If it's soooo horrible and you can't make yourself et to 30, then this game isn't for you. But if this game has enough other awesome things, you owe it to yourself to get at least one character doing some of the primal fights, dungeons and raids.
FFXIV is like a fine wine.... it gets better and better with time.
To really sum up the criticism...
It's not about the combat system and has never been. It's all about the game being a giant tutorial from 1 to 50.
So basically, whenever you hear someone say "the combat is bad" you can deduce the meta-meaning behind his words "I don't want to do the tutorial".
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
I bought the game on sale on Steam to give it a shot yesterday. I honestly have the same feeling about ARR as I did about The Secret World...these games would both be great if I didn't hate the combat so much. I don't really care how good the game is at the end because if I don't like the combat mechanics, I'm never going to play it enough to get that far.
I played ~10 hours of ARR so far, and every single fight is literally me pushing 2 buttons with a long global cooldown. I'm supposed to just keep doing that until the game supposedly gets fun at some point? I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
For people that like the combat in ARR or The Secret World, I can see them rating the games as high as they do. For me, both of them I would give maybe a 7/10, good games with combat so bad that I can't stand to play them for long. Since the majority of what you do in MMOs is combat, if that isn't fun to me, it doesn't really matter what else the game has going for it.
There are much worse MMOs that flopped and went out of business, but I had a lot more fun playing them than ARR and TSW because the combat was fun to me...Tabula Rasa for instance. Even Defiance, not a good MMO, but the combat and driving around in my Dodge Challenger kept me entertained for longer than ARR has even though as an overall product, ARR is much better than Defiance.
To each their own though, I'm sure a lot of people like the ARR combat and I could easily see them giving the game a 9/10 as a result. It's a solid, polished product.
The combat is purposefully designed to be simple and "boring" at FIRST. Your question might be, why the hell would you purposefully make it so simple or Tab Targe Wow-esq? Because YoshiP wanted this game to be a Final Fantasy first and an mmo second. He wanted people who love FF but have never tried an MMO to get into it without being scared away from MMO mechanics.
Most mmos start off boring with little skills unlocked and gradually become more active.
What starts out slow becomes faster and more complicated teh closer you get to end game. You start getting abilities off the global cooldown. You get to pick 5 additional abilities from other classes also, most of the time OFF the global cooldown. What this means for classes like MNK and NINJA, is that you're CONSTANTLY pressing buttons between your 2.0 gCD.
Constantly is right. Playing ARR at level cap feels more like playing Mortal Kombat or God Of War than playing Final Fantasy when playing dps or tank. Where is the party synergy found in all Final Fantasies? Limit break is like a glorified weaponskill. Where is renkei or regiments or that feature where you attacked certain body parts at specific times?
With other classes it is not as exciting... but you can't separate the combat and the content. There is so much movement and coordination involved end game that it's hard to do your "rotation." There is fun combat to be had, but you have to realize it doesn't open up till later. BTW.... 99% of your time in a long term mmo is spent after you reach the cap.
You can seperate combat from content. This isn't a fighting game where skills are unlocked at first. Level 50? I realize most mmos spread progression out but if players have to wait until 50 like a tutorial to like the combat, something is wrong about that.
This whole "combat is boring" is so overblown. If it's soooo horrible and you can't make yourself et to 30, then this game isn't for you. But if this game has enough other awesome things, you owe it to yourself to get at least one character doing some of the primal fights, dungeons and raids.
FFXIV is like a fine wine.... it gets better and better with time.
The combat is not the worst combat ever so that is overblown. But it is nowhere near the level of the top tier mmo combat games. Imo it is too spammy and too many repeated button cycles. Versus methodical like a FFXI or Dark Souls.But this game does have a lot of awesome things. That is why I quit and come back, quit and come back and it is getting even better with the new stuff coming down the pipeline.
Don't get me wrong, Yoshi P has done an excellent job from bring it back from the dead, but I honestly don't get how it's so popular.
Now this is my 'opinion' but it does nothing new, it's a theme park gear grind with a FF skin and to me the worst thing is everything has zone lines, even the city from one end to another you zone, this to me kills any sort of immersion or exploration in an MMO. Even WoW has nice seamless zones.
Everything I read or watch is just about raiding dungeons, is there anything else to do but dungeons? I know there casual PvP and some crafting, but besides that it just seems like all people do is just run dungeons. I get a lot of people love that gear grind, but it just seems so boring repeating it over and over.
I know I'm not the audience they're attracting, but people who play besides Combat what else is there to do if you don't want to run dungeons or craft?
Its a game reborned and it will follow the path of FFXI which is an old japanese hardcore mmorpg. the game itself was hard as fuk...but it had an AMAZING Pve experience.
FFXIV is 2014's ffxi version. better gfx, bla bla, etc. its just not that hardcore...
ffxi had some monsters that were impossible to kill...ff14 doesnt have this kind of notorius monsters.
imagine that there is ahardcore fanbase of the game ff11 + ff14 players + ff14arr players.
they are releasing new content every few months.
every year there's a HUGE patch
crafting is amazing
pve is amazing
trials, open world bosses...
the ammount of time needed to win the game = a lot
Originally posted by mayanking this game is not hard at all i've never found myself saying wow this is pretty hard.. I'm always saying Wow i wish my teammates could also understand these simple mechanics after wiping over and over.
And your teammates say the same thing. It's always others fault.
Tried it because of the Final Fantasy name, but was turned off by the tedious quest-hub grind. I mean if you're going to make me do quests at least make it all kill quests and not inane crap like find the escaped birds.
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
Now top it all off with the fact that it barely resembles any Final Fantasy game that I've enjoyed playing, my personal favorite being FFX. It's not turn-based combat, you don't play with a team of characters, there's no involving plot (at least at the beginning and let me say that the beginning of a game is one of the critical times you need to hook a player with the story). Its style is OK to me but I would have preferred something more like FFVII, FFVIII or FFX, where as I suppose its stylized like the more fantasy-esque Final Fantasy games such as original Final Fantasy or the abomination that is FFXII. If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics. Of course that's just in my opinion...
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics.
I simply had to quote the best parts of your post.
Quests that provide lore and background as well as thoughtfully scripted stories (that ARR does for every single thing from barber to daily quests) is worse than almost contextless grinding.
No personal housing.
If only this game had machina/sci-fi vs magic orientation....
I wish there were at least some references to older final fantasy games. It just feels like a generic fantasy mmo now.
Well, your post is quite a goldmine to say the least.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics.
I simply had to quote the best parts of your post.
Quests that provide lore and background as well as thoughtfully scripted stories (that ARR does for every single thing from barber to daily quests) is worse than almost contextless grinding.
No personal housing.
If only this game had machina/sci-fi vs magic orientation....
I wish there were at least some references to older final fantasy games. It just feels like a generic fantasy mmo now.
Well, your post is quite a goldmine to say the least.
Personally I did not find the questing to be interesting in the least. If these were thoughtfully scripted than they were scripted with the thought in mind to be boring. If you're going to bore me with inane quest dialog then I'd rather just grind killing quests.
At the time I tried the game personal housing had not yet been introduced, but I realize now they have added it.
As far as I know the classes are all typical fantasy classes. A knight, a wizard, a rogue, a healer, etc. What want is less traditional character classes... you know, a gunblade wielder who casts spells, things like that.
The environment (that I saw) was all generic fantasy. Bearing in mind I never even left the starting area as the quest hubs bored me to death before I could make it out.
Are there references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII? Because I'm not interested in the Final Fantasy world from FFI, FFII, FFXII, etc. I'm more interested in the sci-fi aspects of Final Fantasy.
This game feels more like an MMO than it does a Final Fantasy game, that's about the size of it.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Personally I did not find the questing to be interesting in the least. If these were thoughtfully scripted than they were scripted with the thought in mind to be boring. If you're going to bore me with inane quest dialog then I'd rather just grind killing quests.
At the time I tried the game personal housing had not yet been introduced, but I realize now they have added it.
As far as I know the classes are all typical fantasy classes. A knight, a wizard, a rogue, a healer, etc. What want is less traditional character classes... you know, a gunblade wielder who casts spells, things like that.
The environment (that I saw) was all generic fantasy. Bearing in mind I never even left the starting area as the quest hubs bored me to death before I could make it out.
Are there references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII? Because I'm not interested in the Final Fantasy world from FFI, FFII, FFXII, etc. I'm more interested in the sci-fi aspects of Final Fantasy.
This game feels more like an MMO than it does a Final Fantasy game, that's about the size of it.
Dude you make no sense and should not talk about something you clearly have no clue about.
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics.
I simply had to quote the best parts of your post.
Quests that provide lore and background as well as thoughtfully scripted stories (that ARR does for every single thing from barber to daily quests) is worse than almost contextless grinding.
No personal housing.
If only this game had machina/sci-fi vs magic orientation....
I wish there were at least some references to older final fantasy games. It just feels like a generic fantasy mmo now.
Well, your post is quite a goldmine to say the least.
Personally I did not find the questing to be interesting in the least. If these were thoughtfully scripted than they were scripted with the thought in mind to be boring. If you're going to bore me with inane quest dialog then I'd rather just grind killing quests.
At the time I tried the game personal housing had not yet been introduced, but I realize now they have added it.
As far as I know the classes are all typical fantasy classes. A knight, a wizard, a rogue, a healer, etc. What want is less traditional character classes... you know, a gunblade wielder who casts spells, things like that.
The environment (that I saw) was all generic fantasy. Bearing in mind I never even left the starting area as the quest hubs bored me to death before I could make it out.
Are there references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII? Because I'm not interested in the Final Fantasy world from FFI, FFII, FFXII, etc. I'm more interested in the sci-fi aspects of Final Fantasy.
This game feels more like an MMO than it does a Final Fantasy game, that's about the size of it.
You went in with a certain mindset and the result is in accordance. Your biases are extremely clear; you simply dislike MMO questing (and possibly other aspects of a modern MMO), and your current victim happens to be FFXIV. The world is extremely well constructed but you never gave it a chance in the first place. You can say you did but you would only do so to try to convince yourself.
Indeed, you did not have to explain that you never left the starting area; it was obvious to everyone. Your criticism boils down to the game not hitting you with a giant sci-fi bat to the head from level one instead of there being any sort of build up.
Hmm... With the exception that in the very first CGI cutscene (before you even create a character) a giant man-made mechanical moon explodes while on the ground there is a battle between Eorzeans and the magitek weaponry utilizing, gunblade-wielding empireof high technology.
You even get a Magitek Mount in the game. Straight from FFVI. You infiltrate a Garlean fort, filled with sci-fi tech. Yet none of this apparently counts because they haven't made a FFVIII exclusive high fantasy weapon available to be used by players.
Why am I telling you this though? You just completely crapped on the game without knowing a damn thing about it. We don't need people with your mindset in the game, ever.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics.
I simply had to quote the best parts of your post.
Quests that provide lore and background as well as thoughtfully scripted stories (that ARR does for every single thing from barber to daily quests) is worse than almost contextless grinding.
No personal housing.
If only this game had machina/sci-fi vs magic orientation....
I wish there were at least some references to older final fantasy games. It just feels like a generic fantasy mmo now.
Well, your post is quite a goldmine to say the least.
Personally I did not find the questing to be interesting in the least. If these were thoughtfully scripted than they were scripted with the thought in mind to be boring. If you're going to bore me with inane quest dialog then I'd rather just grind killing quests.
At the time I tried the game personal housing had not yet been introduced, but I realize now they have added it.
As far as I know the classes are all typical fantasy classes. A knight, a wizard, a rogue, a healer, etc. What want is less traditional character classes... you know, a gunblade wielder who casts spells, things like that.
The environment (that I saw) was all generic fantasy. Bearing in mind I never even left the starting area as the quest hubs bored me to death before I could make it out.
Are there references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII? Because I'm not interested in the Final Fantasy world from FFI, FFII, FFXII, etc. I'm more interested in the sci-fi aspects of Final Fantasy.
This game feels more like an MMO than it does a Final Fantasy game, that's about the size of it.
You went in with a certain mindset and the result is in accordance. Your biases are extremely clear; you simply dislike MMO questing (and possibly other aspects of a modern MMO), and your current victim happens to be FFXIV. The world is extremely well constructed but you never gave it a chance in the first place. You can say you did but you would only do so to try to convince yourself.
Indeed, you did not have to explain that you never left the starting area; it was obvious to everyone. Your criticism boils down to the game not hitting you with a giant sci-fi bat to the head from level one instead of there being any sort of build up.
Hmm... With the exception that in the very first CGI cutscene (before you even create a character) a giant man-made mechanical moon explodes while on the ground there is a battle between Eorzeans and the magitek weaponry utilizing, gunblade-wielding empireof high technology.
You even get a Magitek Mount in the game. Straight from FFVI. You infiltrate a Garlean fort, filled with sci-fi tech. Yet none of this apparently counts because they haven't made a FFVIII exclusive high fantasy weapon available to be used by players.
Why am I telling you this though? You just completely crapped on the game without knowing a damn thing about it. We don't need people with your mindset in the game, ever.
Well it's true that I'm biased against quest hub grinding because it's boring. I played WoW, I did enough quest hub grinding for a lifetime, I don't need more MMOs where I just have to do more boring quest hub grinding. And if the world is extremely well constructed perhaps they should convey that in some way other than giving it a completely cliche introduction and starter area.
As for the introductory CGI, it doesn't really relate to you in the beginning, does it? It was just backstory, nothing to do with what you're doing when you start out. And why can't you PLAY as someone who uses Magitek, that would be something original and different, not like playing a wizard or a knight that you could play in any number of existing MMOs on the market? Final Fantasy has some cool class systems and unusual character designs (throwing Blitzballs at enemies to kill them, priceless) and yet FFXIV doesn't take advantage of any of that and resorts to using ultimately generic fantasy archetypes.
And I knew enough about it to know it wasn't any different from any other quest hub grinding MMO I've tried, it's just monotony and pointless quests that make you wonder why you're even doing them. It's true that the reason I never gave it a chance is because it immediately throws you into that tedious cycle of quests that really aren't interesting and expects you to actually care about why some bird farmer lost his birds, or why you need to go kill some random wildlife because I don't know they just don't look happy standing in that field out there so kill them.
Point me out a single Final Fantasy game where they start you out saying "well there are monsters in the field and I don't like them so kill them and come back to me." There isn't, because real Final Fantasy games have a story that hooks you from the start, it doesn't give you busy-work quests just as filler between the actual interesting parts. To level up you fight monsters that attack you in the wild, you don't do stupid quests catching birds or shoveling chocobo crap. There's a sense you're actually doing something for a purpose, that there's some goal other than to get EXP.
It's unfortunate that you're willing to make such a brash assumption about me because of my argument. The type of mindset I have is that I love a good story, I prize storytelling, writing, presentation of plot in video games above all else. Yet from my point of view FFXIV is another MMO that fails to grip you, it continuously diverts you from the interesting central plot with meaningless filler quests in hubs that serve only as a source of EXP and have little other reason to exist in the game, something which you don't see in singleplayer RPGs. I also like to see interesting and original classes, spells, abilities, all of which the Final Fantasy franchise has but none of which I see in FFXIV.
I'm a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise and what you see as "crapping all over the game without consideration" is the result of the disappointment I felt playing it and feeling very little of the magic I immediately felt when playing the singleplayer games for the first time. So if I've offended you, I apologize, but I'm not going to feel sorry for my opinion as I don't think it's just being an ignorant hater. I have reason to be unhappy with the game.
Originally posted by vandal5627
Dude you make no sense and should not talk about something you clearly have no clue about.
I apologize if I'm not making myself understood very well, but I'm not sure how else to present my argument.
As for talking about something I have no clue about, I respectfully disagree as I do know Final Fantasy games so I do know what they're like and I do know that when I played FFXIV it didn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game so much as WoW with a Final Fantasy skin.
By the way, who are you to tell me what I can and can't discuss on the forum? Are you some kind of authority on the matter? Could I see your credentials? Really, no need to be childish, friend. It's just a debate, if you can't handle differences of opinion then I'd suggest quitting the Internets.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
And I knew enough about it to know it wasn't any different from any other quest hub grinding MMO I've tried, it's just monotony and pointless quests that make you wonder why you're even doing them. It's true that the reason I never gave it a chance is because it immediately throws you into that tedious cycle of quests that really aren't interesting and expects you to actually care about why some bird farmer lost his birds, or why you need to go kill some random wildlife because I don't know they just don't look happy standing in that field out there so kill them.
Just to be clear, this is not your vast experience of all things ARR speaking, it is your disdain of the context-based objectives leading your game experience from one locale to another speaking. In stead of having contextless monster distributions leading your game experience from one locale to another - which would be better because there are no exclamation marks and actual lore, good or bad, to digest. Yay!
The main story picks up pretty much immediately, but it actually requires you to give just a small, tiny amount of crap (being the exception from other Final Fantasies that apparently hook you in even if you're not even slightly interested in the games at all). Instead of making a massive fuss in your mind about those evil MMO QUESTS. That's what this game requires of you. It's not much, but apparently it is too much. I can't say I remember past Final Fantasies being so good that they would penetrate the amount of cynicism you're sporting here against MMO staples.... Let's just say it out loud here. ARR never had a chance in your case.
It never stood a chance even while being full of scifi high fantasy (just not right from the very get-go) and full of FF staples like the jobs that couldn't possibly be more tradishunal FF jobs even if they tried (just not right from the very get-go). Do you see a pattern here? "Please give everything to me right now or I will not play your game". That's the mentality here. You can't work for that stuff. You need it now or you won't give the game a chance. And that's your choice to make. Completely. But do not act like it is the game's problem when you choose to not give it even the smallest chance, judging it as a non-FF generic MMO from the very foundation it starts to become more and more like FF and less and less like a generic MMO. No FF has ever shown its FF roots right the moment you start the game. The "FF" of the games has always unraveled in time. But only for this game, it is for some reason no longer acceptable.
All that about prizing storytelling, plot, among other things, I hope at least you're convinced by what is coming out of your mouth right now. You said you didn't give it a chance. Clearly your disdain for MMO quest hubs overrules your love for plot, writing, storytelling and presentation. Even the amount of cutscenes in this game blow 99% of MMO's out of the water. The writing is always top-notch and there is a story and context for everything be it the barber quest or a daily. Yet your sole disdain for quest hubs somehow enables you to crap on all of this good stuff the devs have worked years for. The players, honestly and sincerely, find a Final Fantasy game first and foremost in this product. You do not. But you have not actually played it, or even given it a chance. They have. Anyone can link the dots from here as to whether there is a generic MMO or a Final Fantasy product behind A realm reborn.
Whether you know Final Fantasy is irrelevant as long as you don't know anything at all about Final Fantasy XIV, as shown in this thread. The biggest and most obvious clue of this is that in your opinion, removing everything that makes FFXIV's plot, writing, storytelling and presentation so good (through quests) would make it a game you would play. You are the enemy of these aspects, not a fan.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Originally posted by olepi It's pretty simple for me; I've been wanting that old-school feel, and I never played WoW. The last old-school game I played was Vanguard.I like it because:- old school feel.- not a comic book, with frenetic combat- no cash shop- no cash shop- beautiful world, lots of things to do: fishing, crafting, combat, etc- no cash shop
And I knew enough about it to know it wasn't any different from any other quest hub grinding MMO I've tried, it's just monotony and pointless quests that make you wonder why you're even doing them. It's true that the reason I never gave it a chance is because it immediately throws you into that tedious cycle of quests that really aren't interesting and expects you to actually care about why some bird farmer lost his birds, or why you need to go kill some random wildlife because I don't know they just don't look happy standing in that field out there so kill them.
Just to be clear, this is not your vast experience of all things ARR speaking, it is your disdain of the context-based objectives leading your game experience from one locale to another speaking. In stead of having contextless monster distributions leading your game experience from one locale to another - which would be better because there are no exclamation marks and actual lore, good or bad, to digest. Yay!
The main story picks up pretty much immediately, but it actually requires you to give just a small, tiny amount of crap (being the exception from other Final Fantasies that apparently hook you in even if you're not even slightly interested in the games at all). Instead of making a massive fuss in your mind about those evil MMO QUESTS. That's what this game requires of you. It's not much, but apparently it is too much. I can't say I remember past Final Fantasies being so good that they would penetrate the amount of cynicism you're sporting here against MMO staples.... Let's just say it out loud here. ARR never had a chance in your case.
It never stood a chance even while being full of scifi high fantasy (just not right from the very get-go) and full of FF staples like the jobs that couldn't possibly be more tradishunal FF jobs even if they tried (just not right from the very get-go). Do you see a pattern here? "Please give everything to me right now or I will not play your game". That's the mentality here. You can't work for that stuff. You need it now or you won't give the game a chance. And that's your choice to make. Completely. But do not act like it is the game's problem when you choose to not give it even the smallest chance, judging it as a non-FF generic MMO from the very foundation it starts to become more and more like FF and less and less like a generic MMO. No FF has ever shown its FF roots right the moment you start the game. The "FF" of the games has always unraveled in time. But only for this game, it is for some reason no longer acceptable.
All that about prizing storytelling, plot, among other things, I hope at least you're convinced by what is coming out of your mouth right now. You said you didn't give it a chance. Clearly your disdain for MMO quest hubs overrules your love for plot, writing, storytelling and presentation. Even the amount of cutscenes in this game blow 99% of MMO's out of the water. The writing is always top-notch and there is a story and context for everything be it the barber quest or a daily. Yet your sole disdain for quest hubs somehow enables you to crap on all of this good stuff the devs have worked years for. The players, honestly and sincerely, find a Final Fantasy game first and foremost in this product. You do not. But you have not actually played it, or even given it a chance. They have. Anyone can link the dots from here as to whether there is a generic MMO or a Final Fantasy product behind A realm reborn.
Whether you know Final Fantasy is irrelevant as long as you don't know anything at all about Final Fantasy XIV, as shown in this thread. The biggest and most obvious clue of this is that in your opinion, removing everything that makes FFXIV's plot, writing, storytelling and presentation so good (through quests) would make it a game you would play. You are the enemy of these aspects, not a fan.
I think you misunderstand me. Yes, I dislike quest hubs, and yes it's because of my accumulated experience with playing MMOs with quest hubs that I didn't give FFXIV much of a chance. But I'm not an open-world fanatic or anything of the sort, who believes that the elimination of quests will magically make a game enjoyable. I believe that if there are going to be quests then make them meaningful, entertaining, and gripping. Give me quests that make me want to know more about the story, give me quests that make me feel involved, give me quests that endear me to the characters I'm interacting with and make them memorable to me. They don't even have to be overly deep in the beginning, nothing too heavy, but would it hurt to make them at least a little more humorous? More lively? Make it more like I'm actually hearing a person and not just a canned script.
Quests are present in singleplayer RPGs of course and they're what move the story along, but the problem with so many MMO quests is they all feel the same. And saying that I need to give a crap about the story first... well, that's the responsibility of the author of the story, isn't it? Believe it or not one of the basic things taught in a literature course is that is your responsibility as a storyteller to draw the audience in, not tell them "well if you aren't willing to put up with this pointless crap I start the story out with, then bugger off!" You are expected to interest people from the very first sentence you write. So instead of giving me an intro quest having me run around a city talking to NPCs, why not start me off in the middle of some crazy adventure? If the author starts out the story with "You arrive in a city, and now you must go talk to Nana the Shopkeeper to learn about how to buy goatsmilk..." then can you really blame someone for assuming this story might be a little bit dull? This isn't about instant gratification, this is about starting out with an intro that gets into the audience's head and makes them want more.
Ultimately my cynicism isn't about questing in MMOs, it's about dull questing in MMOs. Yes, I didn't give FFXIV much of a chance because I've become disenchanted and lost faith that MMO writers could create a story that interested me. But although I went into the game in a skeptical state, I didn't go into it already having convinced myself I wouldn't like it, or I wouldn't have purchased it at all. And to say I didn't give it a chance I think is not entirely accurate. It's not as though I watched a video of it and quit. I started out in the starter city, did the starter city quests, left and went running between villages and reached some quests at a farm before I gave up. I did give the story a chance to interest me, in my opinion, but dull quests where you carry out the tasks more suited to a farmhand than a hero always turn me off in MMOs. Of course there have always been mini-games in Final Fantasy but they make them silly and amusing, they don't feel like chores. Well... perhaps with the exception of chocobo racing in FFX, man how I grew to loath it and it caused me a great deal of rage over how much I sucked at it, ahaha. Damn you seagulls, damn you. Why do seagulls hate chocobos anyway?
But yes, I suppose... you are right, that I had a knee-jerk reaction to a few quests that didn't interest me, then right after that happened I learned (at that time) that there wasn't any personal housing, which is something I'm attached to, so I got miffed and threw in the towel. However, after the points you've made, I see that you are someone who also appreciates the story-telling aspect of the game and if you say that it picks up quickly, then I'm inclined to concede and say that I believe you.
In that case, maybe I'll give FFXIV another go and try to make it farther along in the quests before passing judgement again. I don't currently have any MMO so I'm willing to resub again, since I did want to like the game. If it does end up giving me the enjoyment of the singleplayer Final Fantasy games after keeping with it for a while, then it will be worth any initial frustration over the adjustment to it.
Thank you. Peace, friend.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
It's pretty simple for me; I've been wanting that old-school feel, and I never played WoW. The last old-school game I played was Vanguard.
I like it because:
- old school feel.
- not a comic book, with frenetic combat
- no cash shop
- no cash shop
- beautiful world, lots of things to do: fishing, crafting, combat, etc
- no cash shop
There is a cash shop, just not in a P2W sense. You can get paid name changes (recently added), paid transfers, paid character changes and some cosmetic items.
And I knew enough about it to know it wasn't any different from any other quest hub grinding MMO I've tried, it's just monotony and pointless quests that make you wonder why you're even doing them. It's true that the reason I never gave it a chance is because it immediately throws you into that tedious cycle of quests that really aren't interesting and expects you to actually care about why some bird farmer lost his birds, or why you need to go kill some random wildlife because I don't know they just don't look happy standing in that field out there so kill them.
Just to be clear, this is not your vast experience of all things ARR speaking, it is your disdain of the context-based objectives leading your game experience from one locale to another speaking. In stead of having contextless monster distributions leading your game experience from one locale to another - which would be better because there are no exclamation marks and actual lore, good or bad, to digest. Yay!
The main story picks up pretty much immediately, but it actually requires you to give just a small, tiny amount of crap (being the exception from other Final Fantasies that apparently hook you in even if you're not even slightly interested in the games at all). Instead of making a massive fuss in your mind about those evil MMO QUESTS. That's what this game requires of you. It's not much, but apparently it is too much. I can't say I remember past Final Fantasies being so good that they would penetrate the amount of cynicism you're sporting here against MMO staples.... Let's just say it out loud here. ARR never had a chance in your case.
It never stood a chance even while being full of scifi high fantasy (just not right from the very get-go) and full of FF staples like the jobs that couldn't possibly be more tradishunal FF jobs even if they tried (just not right from the very get-go). Do you see a pattern here? "Please give everything to me right now or I will not play your game". That's the mentality here. You can't work for that stuff. You need it now or you won't give the game a chance. And that's your choice to make. Completely. But do not act like it is the game's problem when you choose to not give it even the smallest chance, judging it as a non-FF generic MMO from the very foundation it starts to become more and more like FF and less and less like a generic MMO. No FF has ever shown its FF roots right the moment you start the game. The "FF" of the games has always unraveled in time. But only for this game, it is for some reason no longer acceptable.
All that about prizing storytelling, plot, among other things, I hope at least you're convinced by what is coming out of your mouth right now. You said you didn't give it a chance. Clearly your disdain for MMO quest hubs overrules your love for plot, writing, storytelling and presentation. Even the amount of cutscenes in this game blow 99% of MMO's out of the water. The writing is always top-notch and there is a story and context for everything be it the barber quest or a daily. Yet your sole disdain for quest hubs somehow enables you to crap on all of this good stuff the devs have worked years for. The players, honestly and sincerely, find a Final Fantasy game first and foremost in this product. You do not. But you have not actually played it, or even given it a chance. They have. Anyone can link the dots from here as to whether there is a generic MMO or a Final Fantasy product behind A realm reborn.
Whether you know Final Fantasy is irrelevant as long as you don't know anything at all about Final Fantasy XIV, as shown in this thread. The biggest and most obvious clue of this is that in your opinion, removing everything that makes FFXIV's plot, writing, storytelling and presentation so good (through quests) would make it a game you would play. You are the enemy of these aspects, not a fan.
I dunno, Hyanmen. I really enjoy ARR and have had a blast playing it overall, but I gotta agree that the questing in that game is pretty weak.
There is a *lot* of filler quests in there - especially noticeable during the main story arc - that are clearly only there to pad the content and make it take a bit longer. I recall quests where you are literally sent out into the field to go find someone, you talk to them, and then go back to the NPC who sent you there. That's it. No task to be completed. Nothing. It's literally, "go talk to "such and such". You talk to "such and such", and then they send you straight back to the quest giver. And there's been a number of those that I've gone through. They're pure, undeniable, padding.
During one of the job questlines, I believe PGL, you're sent out to go punch a boulder, a single boulder. Then you're sent back to the quest giver to let them know you punched the boulder so you can continue the actual storyline. It's completely arbitrary. It serves absolutely no purpose. There's no storyline attached. It doesn't develop the plot at all. And there are a number of situations just like that throughout. Another is where you, for no reason at all, are sent off to run around Ul'dah picking up someone's dropped coins. No point. No story. Just pure time-padding busy-work.
The main story line is also riddled with content that just screams "filler!". As a couple examples, when you're leading up to the fight with Garuda, how you're sent all over the place, with that whole "Thanks, Mario, but our element is in another castle!" routine. Or leading up to the fight with Titan... "Yes, the world's in danger and Titan must be stopped immediately... after you go gather food items for a big party". You'd think the party could wait 'til *after* this menacing threat to the world is dealt with. Even the game calls attention to the time-wasting going on with the Titan situation, through remarks made by Y'shtola.
Half the quest content in Coerthas felt like filler to me. So much bouncing back and forth between Dragonhead and the Observatory, dealing with the Elezen and their drama. I was cheering for Dravania by the end of that; "Please, wipe out these whiny, melodramatic, uptight, emo gits, and put them out of Eorzea's misery..."
There's just so much blatant time-filler in the quests in ARR. As much as I enjoy the game, I'd be completely dishonest to not acknowledge it. It's there, and they don't even try to cleverly mask it. Frankly, I do expect better than that from SE.
To me, the questing in ARR is one of its weakest parts, right up there with the awful and inconsistent voice-acting. Speaking of voice acting (no pun intended), I wish Yoshi-P would shit or get off the pot. Have voice acting, and go all out on it. Or don't have it at all. The whole thing of having half a cut-scene voiced, then suddenly cutting to silence with chat bubbles is just odd.
Funny enough, the best story arcs I've experienced in ARR are the Hildibrand series. Hands-down. I wish all the quest content in the game was of that quality. I think they need to give Hildibrand and Nashu their own game, along with Godbert and whom ever else gets tangled up in that group. I'd play that game.
But yeah, there are aspects of ARR I definitely praise and find highly enjoyable. No question. The questing is not one of them, though.
I dunno, Hyanmen. I really enjoy ARR and have had a blast playing it overall, but I gotta agree that the questing in that game is pretty weak.
There is a *lot* of filler quests in there - especially noticeable during the main story arc - that are clearly only there to pad the content and make it take a bit longer. I recall quests where you are literally sent out into the field to go find someone, you talk to them, and then go back to the NPC who sent you there. That's it. No task to be completed. Nothing. It's literally, "go talk to "such and such". You talk to "such and such", and then they send you straight back to the quest giver. And there's been a number of those that I've gone through. They're pure, undeniable, padding.
During one of the job questlines, I believe PGL, you're sent out to go punch a boulder, a single boulder. Then you're sent back to the quest giver to let them know you punched the boulder so you can continue the actual storyline. It's completely arbitrary. It serves absolutely no purpose. There's no storyline attached. It doesn't develop the plot at all. And there are a number of situations just like that throughout. Another is where you, for no reason at all, are sent off to run around Ul'dah picking up someone's dropped coins. No point. No story. Just pure time-padding busy-work.
The main story line is also riddled with content that just screams "filler!". As a couple examples, when you're leading up to the fight with Garuda, how you're sent all over the place, with that whole "Thanks, Mario, but our element is in another castle!" routine. Or leading up to the fight with Titan... "Yes, the world's in danger and Titan must be stopped immediately... after you go gather food items for a big party". You'd think the party could wait 'til *after* this menacing threat to the world is dealt with. Even the game calls attention to the time-wasting going on with the Titan situation, through remarks made by Y'shtola.
Half the quest content in Coerthas felt like filler to me. So much bouncing back and forth between Dragonhead and the Observatory, dealing with the Elezen and their drama. I was cheering for Dravania by the end of that; "Please, wipe out these whiny, melodramatic, uptight, emo gits, and put them out of Eorzea's misery..."
There's just so much blatant time-filler in the quests in ARR. As much as I enjoy the game, I'd be completely dishonest to not acknowledge it. It's there, and they don't even try to cleverly mask it. Frankly, I do expect better than that from SE.
To me, the questing in ARR is one of its weakest parts, right up there with the awful and inconsistent voice-acting. Speaking of voice acting (no pun intended), I wish Yoshi-P would shit or get off the pot. Have voice acting, and go all out on it. Or don't have it at all. The whole thing of having half a cut-scene voiced, then suddenly cutting to silence with chat bubbles is just odd.
Funny enough, the best story arcs I've experienced in ARR are the Hildibrand series. Hands-down. I wish all the quest content in the game was of that quality. I think they need to give Hildibrand and Nashu their own game, along with Godbert and whom ever else gets tangled up in that group. I'd play that game.
But yeah, there are aspects of ARR I definitely praise and find highly enjoyable. No question. The questing is not one of them, though.
'course, that's just me.
Thanks for your 2 cents, Pratt2112.
Yes, I do agree with you in that there is some filler content in the main story. While the plot is indeed stalling at those points in the game, the quality of the quests is left for the scriptwriters and loremasters to keep up. In fact even in the lower moments of the storyline there is no dip in the quality of the script nor the amount of lore that is provided to the player. To me some of the filler moments had the coolest bits of lore to digest, as the plot sent you to some distant locations you hadn't visited before, which had their own peoples and their stories to tell. In that way the presentation did not falter that much either. I would say that holds true in Coerthas as well, as the political scene in that place has a lot of material to draw from.
The quests would fall apart quite fast if the localization and loremasters weren't doing their work (and if the plot was weaker, of course). The fact quests do their job in this regard, and I think they do it well, is what justifies their existence (even in the filler moments). Also the fact that the world they've created is full of stories to tell. Which are also being interwoven into one another. For example when you do the ninja quest for the lightning ninjutsu the NPC references Ramuh and the Ramuh theme plays in the background. SE crafts the world around the mythos they've created for this game. The quests allow us to experience that mythos.
Of course, if you haven't or won't give it a chance, you'll be miserable like you would probably be with any MMO nowadays. I think an FF game deserves better. The world in this FF is presented thousand times better than any previous FF game could hope to. And until somebody figures out a better way to do it than letting the quest NPC's (and green NPC's, of which there are TONS) tell their stories, quests have a very firm spot in this game.
By the way, personally I thought 2.4 had a much higher quality for the VA and it felt like there was a lot more of it. The new voice actors were also quite good. I hope that's a sign of things to come.
I'm not sure why more should be expected of SE in this regard, as they've completely blown other MMO's out of the park with the presentation and plot of ARR as-is. But if they can rid the expansions of blatant filler plots, good.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
You know Hyanmen a story is only as good as you let it be. If you are jaded and unable to enjoy anything because "you have seen it all before'' then you have only yourself to blame. I often hear people condemn things because it is the same story about some lone adventurer triumphing. You have only yourself to blame if you cannot set aside your prejudice and simply just enjoy something. I still love the Final Fantasy games. I enjoy them and I do not dissect everything or every game and do not compare and contrast I take each for what they are and simply love them. Fine there are some worse than others but it's the art the world and stories I like.
This attitude people have is weariness with games in general. It happens in all forms of entertainment people have the 'been there done that' feeling and dismiss things out of hand. I do feel sorry for people who cannot simply enjoy things and get hung up on the small stuff and make themselves miserable. What I cannot accept however is when they try to bring everybody down by constantly disparaging or saying with incredulity how anyone can enjoy something. Well buster I feel sorry for you then if you cannot see the magic of this game. Your loss.
Yes, I do agree with you in that there is some filler content in the main story. While the plot is indeed stalling at those points in the game, the quality of the quests is left for the scriptwriters and loremasters to keep up. In fact even in the lower moments of the storyline there is no dip in the quality of the script nor the amount of lore that is provided to the player. To me some of the filler moments had the coolest bits of lore to digest, as the plot sent you to some distant locations you hadn't visited before, which had their own peoples and their stories to tell. In that way the presentation did not falter that much either. I would say that holds true in Coerthas as well, as the political scene in that place has a lot of material to draw from.
The quests would fall apart quite fast if the localization and loremasters weren't doing their work (and if the plot was weaker, of course). The fact quests do their job in this regard, and I think they do it well, is what justifies their existence (even in the filler moments). Also the fact that the world they've created is full of stories to tell. Which are also being interwoven into one another. For example when you do the ninja quest for the lightning ninjutsu the NPC references Ramuh and the Ramuh theme plays in the background. SE crafts the world around the mythos they've created for this game. The quests allow us to experience that mythos.
Of course, if you haven't or won't give it a chance, you'll be miserable like you would probably be with any MMO nowadays. I think an FF game deserves better. The world in this FF is presented thousand times better than any previous FF game could hope to. And until somebody figures out a better way to do it than letting the quest NPC's (and green NPC's, of which there are TONS) tell their stories, quests have a very firm spot in this game.
By the way, personally I thought 2.4 had a much higher quality for the VA and it felt like there was a lot more of it. The new voice actors were also quite good. I hope that's a sign of things to come.
I'm not sure why more should be expected of SE in this regard, as they've completely blown other MMO's out of the park with the presentation and plot of ARR as-is. But if they can rid the expansions of blatant filler plots, good.
Well, you're kinda using the game's stronger aspects to bolster a weaker one here. But it does bring to light another problem with how the quests are handled. When they have all this great lore and these magnificent, terrifying enemies to deal with, you would think they'd really do their best to build up those situations to make them feel as epic as possible. Yet, in so many cases, they do the opposite, by giving you arbitrary, time-wasting activities to run off and do.
The example of going off to gather foodstuff for a party when there's this imminent threat putting everyone in danger just makes no sense at all. It feels like they put the real storyline on -pause- because the designers felt like you were moving along too quickly, and threw in a handful of completely irrelevant side-tasks to spread it out more. To be clear, you're on a very specific mission: To gather information on defeating Titan. It's made abundantly clear to you that his being summoned is a "Very Bad Thing". Time is short, and the safety of Eorzea is at stake. Shizzle is real, yo.
Under those circumstances, it makes absolutely no sense to be sending you all over the place, gathering food for a party. Maybe after the fight, when there's reason to celebrate, and time to do so, they could ask you to help out. It takes what is otherwise a pretty tense situation, and completely deflates it. "He's uber dangerous, not to be taken lightly, and must be put down yesterday.... but, eh, never mind... he can wait."
Same with the Garuda situation. You'd think people assisting in something as serious as Garuda ('cause they really do build her up as a serious threat) would have a better handle on exactly what kind of element you need, rather than sending you on fruitless, time-wasting endeavors, giving her more time to gain power. And the way it's played out in the story arc, as I recall, is people just keep "getting it wrong". It's a slightly less arbitrary way of time-padding, as at least the tasks you're doing are directly related to the ultimate goal (getting at Garuda). But it's still very clearly padding in how they did it.
My beef with the stuff in Coerthas was how much you got sent back and forth, often to the same exact spot you'd just left, to carry out different tasks. Also, the way they drag out the quests there is by making the Elezen seem like an unbelievably dense group of people. "I know you already risked your own life for us by doing "this", and "this", and "this" for "so and so" and "so and so", and that's cool. But I still don't trust you, and will not help you until you risk your life again by doing "this" and "this" for me". And that exact routine plays out multiple times. They don't even change up the theme. It's pure "copy and paste" style time-filler.
Rather than engrossing me in their lore, etc, it made me think of the Elezen as complete a-holes whose plight and politics I couldn't have cared less about. They're a train-wreck in progress, for which the only cure is a hasty, Lemmings-style jaunt off the nearest very high cliff, with me standing by cheering them on. I could have ended up thinking "that was really cool" by the end. Instead, I was just sick of the place and glad to be out of there.
When I say "I expect more from SE" - is that they could have come up with better quest lines than they did - especially where it matters. I've seen much better content from them - right in FFXIV in fact - as well as in other FF titles. Again, the Hildibrand quests - silly as they are - are done extremely well. Far better than most anything else I did in that game, quest/story-wise. And to think he and Nashu were intended to be a one-off deal to help introduce Inn-Rooms in 1.0. I think their introduction is one of the best things that's happened to FFXIV under Yoshi-P. There's more personality, even depth, behind those two than there is behind most of the other characters you encounter.
So when I say I expect more from SE, I say it because I've seen them do it, many times.
So, just reiterating.. the questing in that game remains one of its weakest parts, for me.
As for them blowing other MMOs out of the water... eh... well I'll just say that's 100% personal opinion. I've experienced what, for me, is far better storytelling, and better presentation in other MMOs of late than what FFXIV offers. Of course, that's 100% my personal opinion.
Well, you're kinda using the game's stronger aspects to bolster a weaker one here. But it does bring to light another problem with how the quests are handled. When they have all this great lore and these magnificent, terrifying enemies to deal with, you would think they'd really do their best to build up those situations to make them feel as epic as possible. Yet, in so many cases, they do the opposite, by giving you arbitrary, time-wasting activities to run off and do.
The example of going off to gather foodstuff for a party when there's this imminent threat putting everyone in danger just makes no sense at all. It feels like they put the real storyline on -pause- because the designers felt like you were moving along too quickly, and threw in a handful of completely irrelevant side-tasks to spread it out more. To be clear, you're on a very specific mission: To gather information on defeating Titan. It's made abundantly clear to you that his being summoned is a "Very Bad Thing". Time is short, and the safety of Eorzea is at stake. Shizzle is real, yo.
Under those circumstances, it makes absolutely no sense to be sending you all over the place, gathering food for a party. Maybe after the fight, when there's reason to celebrate, and time to do so, they could ask you to help out. It takes what is otherwise a pretty tense situation, and completely deflates it. "He's uber dangerous, not to be taken lightly, and must be put down yesterday.... but, eh, never mind... he can wait."
Same with the Garuda situation. You'd think people assisting in something as serious as Garuda ('cause they really do build her up as a serious threat) would have a better handle on exactly what kind of element you need, rather than sending you on fruitless, time-wasting endeavors, giving her more time to gain power. And the way it's played out in the story arc, as I recall, is people just keep "getting it wrong". It's a slightly less arbitrary way of time-padding, as at least the tasks you're doing are directly related to the ultimate goal (getting at Garuda). But it's still very clearly padding in how they did it.
My beef with the stuff in Coerthas was how much you got sent back and forth, often to the same exact spot you'd just left, to carry out different tasks. Also, the way they drag out the quests there is by making the Elezen seem like an unbelievably dense group of people. "I know you already risked your own life for us by doing "this", and "this", and "this" for "so and so" and "so and so", and that's cool. But I still don't trust you, and will not help you until you risk your life again by doing "this" and "this" for me". And that exact routine plays out multiple times. They don't even change up the theme. It's pure "copy and paste" style time-filler.
Rather than engrossing me in their lore, etc, it made me think of the Elezen as complete a-holes whose plight and politics I couldn't have cared less about. They're a train-wreck in progress, for which the only cure is a hasty, Lemmings-style jaunt off the nearest very high cliff, with me standing by cheering them on. I could have ended up thinking "that was really cool" by the end. Instead, I was just sick of the place and glad to be out of there.
When I say "I expect more from SE" - is that they could have come up with better quest lines than they did - especially where it matters. I've seen much better content from them - right in FFXIV in fact - as well as in other FF titles. Again, the Hildibrand quests - silly as they are - are done extremely well. Far better than most anything else I did in that game, quest/story-wise. And to think he and Nashu were intended to be a one-off deal to help introduce Inn-Rooms in 1.0. I think their introduction is one of the best things that's happened to FFXIV under Yoshi-P. There's more personality, even depth, behind those two than there is behind most of the other characters you encounter.
So when I say I expect more from SE, I say it because I've seen them do it, many times.
So, just reiterating.. the questing in that game remains one of its weakest parts, for me.
As for them blowing other MMOs out of the water... eh... well I'll just say that's 100% personal opinion. I've experienced what, for me, is far better storytelling, and better presentation in other MMOs of late than what FFXIV offers. Of course, that's 100% my personal opinion.
Anyway.. good talk
Now I have to get ready for work
You taking part of the story and dropping the rest.
During the Titan build-up. The guy wants you to prove to him your capable of defeating Titan.. that is all the side quest are.. chances for you to prove yourself... not only to Wheiskaet but all the Company of Heroes.
You have to remember, what you think are "World destroying events" the normal peon will think, well it is not affecting my world currently, so it is no big deal. It is the same thing with current IRL world events.
The entire Coerthas chain servers as an introduction into Ishagard and the political nightmare involving the church... you think it is bad now wait till Heavensward. It has nothing to do with Elezen, except a lot of Ishgards are Elezen.
On the way to level 50 you had to prove you were a true hero. The quests post 50, you get your due props. Hell I hated it when I wanted to track down Ivy, but I had more important things to do, that involved just some damn meeting between heads of state. I wanted to be running around finding the bad guy, not sitting in some damn meeting.
Well, you're kinda using the game's stronger aspects to bolster a weaker one here. But it does bring to light another problem with how the quests are handled. When they have all this great lore and these magnificent, terrifying enemies to deal with, you would think they'd really do their best to build up those situations to make them feel as epic as possible. Yet, in so many cases, they do the opposite, by giving you arbitrary, time-wasting activities to run off and do.
The example of going off to gather foodstuff for a party when there's this imminent threat putting everyone in danger just makes no sense at all. It feels like they put the real storyline on -pause- because the designers felt like you were moving along too quickly, and threw in a handful of completely irrelevant side-tasks to spread it out more. To be clear, you're on a very specific mission: To gather information on defeating Titan. It's made abundantly clear to you that his being summoned is a "Very Bad Thing". Time is short, and the safety of Eorzea is at stake. Shizzle is real, yo.
Under those circumstances, it makes absolutely no sense to be sending you all over the place, gathering food for a party. Maybe after the fight, when there's reason to celebrate, and time to do so, they could ask you to help out. It takes what is otherwise a pretty tense situation, and completely deflates it. "He's uber dangerous, not to be taken lightly, and must be put down yesterday.... but, eh, never mind... he can wait."
Same with the Garuda situation. You'd think people assisting in something as serious as Garuda ('cause they really do build her up as a serious threat) would have a better handle on exactly what kind of element you need, rather than sending you on fruitless, time-wasting endeavors, giving her more time to gain power. And the way it's played out in the story arc, as I recall, is people just keep "getting it wrong". It's a slightly less arbitrary way of time-padding, as at least the tasks you're doing are directly related to the ultimate goal (getting at Garuda). But it's still very clearly padding in how they did it.
My beef with the stuff in Coerthas was how much you got sent back and forth, often to the same exact spot you'd just left, to carry out different tasks. Also, the way they drag out the quests there is by making the Elezen seem like an unbelievably dense group of people. "I know you already risked your own life for us by doing "this", and "this", and "this" for "so and so" and "so and so", and that's cool. But I still don't trust you, and will not help you until you risk your life again by doing "this" and "this" for me". And that exact routine plays out multiple times. They don't even change up the theme. It's pure "copy and paste" style time-filler.
Rather than engrossing me in their lore, etc, it made me think of the Elezen as complete a-holes whose plight and politics I couldn't have cared less about. They're a train-wreck in progress, for which the only cure is a hasty, Lemmings-style jaunt off the nearest very high cliff, with me standing by cheering them on. I could have ended up thinking "that was really cool" by the end. Instead, I was just sick of the place and glad to be out of there.
When I say "I expect more from SE" - is that they could have come up with better quest lines than they did - especially where it matters. I've seen much better content from them - right in FFXIV in fact - as well as in other FF titles. Again, the Hildibrand quests - silly as they are - are done extremely well. Far better than most anything else I did in that game, quest/story-wise. And to think he and Nashu were intended to be a one-off deal to help introduce Inn-Rooms in 1.0. I think their introduction is one of the best things that's happened to FFXIV under Yoshi-P. There's more personality, even depth, behind those two than there is behind most of the other characters you encounter.
So when I say I expect more from SE, I say it because I've seen them do it, many times.
So, just reiterating.. the questing in that game remains one of its weakest parts, for me.
As for them blowing other MMOs out of the water... eh... well I'll just say that's 100% personal opinion. I've experienced what, for me, is far better storytelling, and better presentation in other MMOs of late than what FFXIV offers. Of course, that's 100% my personal opinion.
Anyway.. good talk
Now I have to get ready for work
fs23otm already touched on some of the important points. What you end up doing in the game is justified. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it's not arbitrary. The Company of Heroes questline in particular was extremely clear about the reason for sending you out to "gather food".
Coerthan people being dense is as canon as it can get, too. They don't "seem" dense or wary; they are. And the reasons for this are laid out pretty explicitly throughout the questline too. Yes, it works as a plot machine for stalling - but they are not made to be that way because it can stall the player - they are that way because that is the mythos the world team has created for Coerthas and Ishgard. It is extremely believable, knowing what happens in Ishgard and their past. Their wariness is the opposite of arbitrary. In short, the game never lets the plot machine become the horse while the mythos is the wagon. Frankly in most MMO's it is clear that the mythos exists to support the plot (secondary) and gameplay systems (primary).
Of course SE can do better if they are given three months to create four quests (as in Hildebrand quests). The devs could have simply removed the filler and just left out the good stuff on corresponding levels. That would've made for a quite choppy story experience though, and made players focus on sidequests instead of the overarching main plot (so the filler comments wouldn't have ended there either). Whether that would be "better" is pretty subjective, and SE simply chose differently. SE could have also delayed the game's release to, say, December. As the result we would have gotten a more coherent main story but we would've had to wait for many months to get there, too. There's no one perfect solution here.
While talking about the personality of the characters there's no good solution there either. The game fleshes out the characters if you talk to them during the main quest (green NPC's). Making those dialogues a part of the story itself would have bloated it even more, and probably would've been classified as "filler" either way.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Comments
I bought the game on sale on Steam to give it a shot yesterday. I honestly have the same feeling about ARR as I did about The Secret World...these games would both be great if I didn't hate the combat so much. I don't really care how good the game is at the end because if I don't like the combat mechanics, I'm never going to play it enough to get that far.
I played ~10 hours of ARR so far, and every single fight is literally me pushing 2 buttons with a long global cooldown. I'm supposed to just keep doing that until the game supposedly gets fun at some point? I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
For people that like the combat in ARR or The Secret World, I can see them rating the games as high as they do. For me, both of them I would give maybe a 7/10, good games with combat so bad that I can't stand to play them for long. Since the majority of what you do in MMOs is combat, if that isn't fun to me, it doesn't really matter what else the game has going for it.
There are much worse MMOs that flopped and went out of business, but I had a lot more fun playing them than ARR and TSW because the combat was fun to me...Tabula Rasa for instance. Even Defiance, not a good MMO, but the combat and driving around in my Dodge Challenger kept me entertained for longer than ARR has even though as an overall product, ARR is much better than Defiance.
To each their own though, I'm sure a lot of people like the ARR combat and I could easily see them giving the game a 9/10 as a result. It's a solid, polished product.
The combat is purposefully designed to be simple and "boring" at FIRST. Your question might be, why the hell would you purposefully make it so simple or Tab Targe Wow-esq? Because YoshiP wanted this game to be a Final Fantasy first and an mmo second. He wanted people who love FF but have never tried an MMO to get into it without being scared away from MMO mechanics.
What starts out slow becomes faster and more complicated teh closer you get to end game. You start getting abilities off the global cooldown. You get to pick 5 additional abilities from other classes also, most of the time OFF the global cooldown. What this means for classes like MNK and NINJA, is that you're CONSTANTLY pressing buttons between your 2.0 gCD.
With other classes it is not as exciting... but you can't separate the combat and the content. There is so much movement and coordination involved end game that it's hard to do your "rotation." There is fun combat to be had, but you have to realize it doesn't open up till later. BTW.... 99% of your time in a long term mmo is spent after you reach the cap.
So it takes you like a week or two to get to lvl 30 and you might play 2 years at lvl cap.
This whole "combat is boring" is so overblown. If it's soooo horrible and you can't make yourself et to 30, then this game isn't for you. But if this game has enough other awesome things, you owe it to yourself to get at least one character doing some of the primal fights, dungeons and raids.
FFXIV is like a fine wine.... it gets better and better with time.
To really sum up the criticism...
It's not about the combat system and has never been. It's all about the game being a giant tutorial from 1 to 50.
So basically, whenever you hear someone say "the combat is bad" you can deduce the meta-meaning behind his words "I don't want to do the tutorial".
Its a game reborned and it will follow the path of FFXI which is an old japanese hardcore mmorpg. the game itself was hard as fuk...but it had an AMAZING Pve experience.
FFXIV is 2014's ffxi version. better gfx, bla bla, etc. its just not that hardcore...
ffxi had some monsters that were impossible to kill...ff14 doesnt have this kind of notorius monsters.
imagine that there is ahardcore fanbase of the game ff11 + ff14 players + ff14arr players.
they are releasing new content every few months.
every year there's a HUGE patch
crafting is amazing
pve is amazing
trials, open world bosses...
the ammount of time needed to win the game = a lot
ppl love it.
ez
And your teammates say the same thing. It's always others fault.
Tried it because of the Final Fantasy name, but was turned off by the tedious quest-hub grind. I mean if you're going to make me do quests at least make it all kill quests and not inane crap like find the escaped birds.
Honestly I'd prefer to just grind mobs in an area and get turn-ins that I hand in for exp, or do instanced dungeon quests to clear some randomized instance dungeon, or anything, just not running between quest hubs doing stupid shit that makes me wonder how anyone could consider this fun.
Also, no personal housing, guild housing only. Fail.
Now top it all off with the fact that it barely resembles any Final Fantasy game that I've enjoyed playing, my personal favorite being FFX. It's not turn-based combat, you don't play with a team of characters, there's no involving plot (at least at the beginning and let me say that the beginning of a game is one of the critical times you need to hook a player with the story). Its style is OK to me but I would have preferred something more like FFVII, FFVIII or FFX, where as I suppose its stylized like the more fantasy-esque Final Fantasy games such as original Final Fantasy or the abomination that is FFXII. If they made a Final Fantasy MMO in the more sci-fi oriented Final Fantasy universe with machina vs magic and such I'd probably enjoy it more as that's the Final Fantasy that I personally am endeared to.
So I can say that I don't see how the explanation of people enjoying it simply because it's a Final Fantasy game is really a good enough explanation. It doesn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game to me, beyond familiar music and some general Final Fantasy aesthetics. Of course that's just in my opinion...
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Currently Playing: Dungeon Fighter Online Global
Waiting for: None
I simply had to quote the best parts of your post.
Quests that provide lore and background as well as thoughtfully scripted stories (that ARR does for every single thing from barber to daily quests) is worse than almost contextless grinding.
No personal housing.
If only this game had machina/sci-fi vs magic orientation....
I wish there were at least some references to older final fantasy games. It just feels like a generic fantasy mmo now.
Well, your post is quite a goldmine to say the least.
Personally I did not find the questing to be interesting in the least. If these were thoughtfully scripted than they were scripted with the thought in mind to be boring. If you're going to bore me with inane quest dialog then I'd rather just grind killing quests.
At the time I tried the game personal housing had not yet been introduced, but I realize now they have added it.
As far as I know the classes are all typical fantasy classes. A knight, a wizard, a rogue, a healer, etc. What want is less traditional character classes... you know, a gunblade wielder who casts spells, things like that.
The environment (that I saw) was all generic fantasy. Bearing in mind I never even left the starting area as the quest hubs bored me to death before I could make it out.
Are there references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII? Because I'm not interested in the Final Fantasy world from FFI, FFII, FFXII, etc. I'm more interested in the sci-fi aspects of Final Fantasy.
This game feels more like an MMO than it does a Final Fantasy game, that's about the size of it.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Currently Playing: Dungeon Fighter Online Global
Waiting for: None
Dude you make no sense and should not talk about something you clearly have no clue about.
You went in with a certain mindset and the result is in accordance. Your biases are extremely clear; you simply dislike MMO questing (and possibly other aspects of a modern MMO), and your current victim happens to be FFXIV. The world is extremely well constructed but you never gave it a chance in the first place. You can say you did but you would only do so to try to convince yourself.
Indeed, you did not have to explain that you never left the starting area; it was obvious to everyone. Your criticism boils down to the game not hitting you with a giant sci-fi bat to the head from level one instead of there being any sort of build up.
Hmm... With the exception that in the very first CGI cutscene (before you even create a character) a giant man-made mechanical moon explodes while on the ground there is a battle between Eorzeans and the magitek weaponry utilizing, gunblade-wielding empire of high technology.
You even get a Magitek Mount in the game. Straight from FFVI. You infiltrate a Garlean fort, filled with sci-fi tech. Yet none of this apparently counts because they haven't made a FFVIII exclusive high fantasy weapon available to be used by players.
Why am I telling you this though? You just completely crapped on the game without knowing a damn thing about it. We don't need people with your mindset in the game, ever.
Well it's true that I'm biased against quest hub grinding because it's boring. I played WoW, I did enough quest hub grinding for a lifetime, I don't need more MMOs where I just have to do more boring quest hub grinding. And if the world is extremely well constructed perhaps they should convey that in some way other than giving it a completely cliche introduction and starter area.
As for the introductory CGI, it doesn't really relate to you in the beginning, does it? It was just backstory, nothing to do with what you're doing when you start out. And why can't you PLAY as someone who uses Magitek, that would be something original and different, not like playing a wizard or a knight that you could play in any number of existing MMOs on the market? Final Fantasy has some cool class systems and unusual character designs (throwing Blitzballs at enemies to kill them, priceless) and yet FFXIV doesn't take advantage of any of that and resorts to using ultimately generic fantasy archetypes.
And I knew enough about it to know it wasn't any different from any other quest hub grinding MMO I've tried, it's just monotony and pointless quests that make you wonder why you're even doing them. It's true that the reason I never gave it a chance is because it immediately throws you into that tedious cycle of quests that really aren't interesting and expects you to actually care about why some bird farmer lost his birds, or why you need to go kill some random wildlife because I don't know they just don't look happy standing in that field out there so kill them.
Point me out a single Final Fantasy game where they start you out saying "well there are monsters in the field and I don't like them so kill them and come back to me." There isn't, because real Final Fantasy games have a story that hooks you from the start, it doesn't give you busy-work quests just as filler between the actual interesting parts. To level up you fight monsters that attack you in the wild, you don't do stupid quests catching birds or shoveling chocobo crap. There's a sense you're actually doing something for a purpose, that there's some goal other than to get EXP.
It's unfortunate that you're willing to make such a brash assumption about me because of my argument. The type of mindset I have is that I love a good story, I prize storytelling, writing, presentation of plot in video games above all else. Yet from my point of view FFXIV is another MMO that fails to grip you, it continuously diverts you from the interesting central plot with meaningless filler quests in hubs that serve only as a source of EXP and have little other reason to exist in the game, something which you don't see in singleplayer RPGs. I also like to see interesting and original classes, spells, abilities, all of which the Final Fantasy franchise has but none of which I see in FFXIV.
I'm a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise and what you see as "crapping all over the game without consideration" is the result of the disappointment I felt playing it and feeling very little of the magic I immediately felt when playing the singleplayer games for the first time. So if I've offended you, I apologize, but I'm not going to feel sorry for my opinion as I don't think it's just being an ignorant hater. I have reason to be unhappy with the game.
I apologize if I'm not making myself understood very well, but I'm not sure how else to present my argument.
As for talking about something I have no clue about, I respectfully disagree as I do know Final Fantasy games so I do know what they're like and I do know that when I played FFXIV it didn't feel like playing a Final Fantasy game so much as WoW with a Final Fantasy skin.
By the way, who are you to tell me what I can and can't discuss on the forum?
Are you some kind of authority on the matter? Could I see your credentials? Really, no need to be childish, friend. It's just a debate, if you can't handle differences of opinion then I'd suggest quitting the Internets.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Currently Playing: Dungeon Fighter Online Global
Waiting for: None
Just to be clear, this is not your vast experience of all things ARR speaking, it is your disdain of the context-based objectives leading your game experience from one locale to another speaking. In stead of having contextless monster distributions leading your game experience from one locale to another - which would be better because there are no exclamation marks and actual lore, good or bad, to digest. Yay!
The main story picks up pretty much immediately, but it actually requires you to give just a small, tiny amount of crap (being the exception from other Final Fantasies that apparently hook you in even if you're not even slightly interested in the games at all). Instead of making a massive fuss in your mind about those evil MMO QUESTS. That's what this game requires of you. It's not much, but apparently it is too much. I can't say I remember past Final Fantasies being so good that they would penetrate the amount of cynicism you're sporting here against MMO staples.... Let's just say it out loud here. ARR never had a chance in your case.
It never stood a chance even while being full of scifi high fantasy (just not right from the very get-go) and full of FF staples like the jobs that couldn't possibly be more tradishunal FF jobs even if they tried (just not right from the very get-go). Do you see a pattern here? "Please give everything to me right now or I will not play your game". That's the mentality here. You can't work for that stuff. You need it now or you won't give the game a chance. And that's your choice to make. Completely. But do not act like it is the game's problem when you choose to not give it even the smallest chance, judging it as a non-FF generic MMO from the very foundation it starts to become more and more like FF and less and less like a generic MMO. No FF has ever shown its FF roots right the moment you start the game. The "FF" of the games has always unraveled in time. But only for this game, it is for some reason no longer acceptable.
All that about prizing storytelling, plot, among other things, I hope at least you're convinced by what is coming out of your mouth right now. You said you didn't give it a chance. Clearly your disdain for MMO quest hubs overrules your love for plot, writing, storytelling and presentation. Even the amount of cutscenes in this game blow 99% of MMO's out of the water. The writing is always top-notch and there is a story and context for everything be it the barber quest or a daily. Yet your sole disdain for quest hubs somehow enables you to crap on all of this good stuff the devs have worked years for. The players, honestly and sincerely, find a Final Fantasy game first and foremost in this product. You do not. But you have not actually played it, or even given it a chance. They have. Anyone can link the dots from here as to whether there is a generic MMO or a Final Fantasy product behind A realm reborn.
Whether you know Final Fantasy is irrelevant as long as you don't know anything at all about Final Fantasy XIV, as shown in this thread. The biggest and most obvious clue of this is that in your opinion, removing everything that makes FFXIV's plot, writing, storytelling and presentation so good (through quests) would make it a game you would play. You are the enemy of these aspects, not a fan.
It's pretty simple for me; I've been wanting that old-school feel, and I never played WoW. The last old-school game I played was Vanguard.
I like it because:
- old school feel.
- not a comic book, with frenetic combat
- no cash shop
- no cash shop
- beautiful world, lots of things to do: fishing, crafting, combat, etc
- no cash shop
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
But it has a Cash shop
I think you misunderstand me. Yes, I dislike quest hubs, and yes it's because of my accumulated experience with playing MMOs with quest hubs that I didn't give FFXIV much of a chance. But I'm not an open-world fanatic or anything of the sort, who believes that the elimination of quests will magically make a game enjoyable. I believe that if there are going to be quests then make them meaningful, entertaining, and gripping. Give me quests that make me want to know more about the story, give me quests that make me feel involved, give me quests that endear me to the characters I'm interacting with and make them memorable to me. They don't even have to be overly deep in the beginning, nothing too heavy, but would it hurt to make them at least a little more humorous? More lively? Make it more like I'm actually hearing a person and not just a canned script.
Quests are present in singleplayer RPGs of course and they're what move the story along, but the problem with so many MMO quests is they all feel the same. And saying that I need to give a crap about the story first... well, that's the responsibility of the author of the story, isn't it? Believe it or not one of the basic things taught in a literature course is that is your responsibility as a storyteller to draw the audience in, not tell them "well if you aren't willing to put up with this pointless crap I start the story out with, then bugger off!" You are expected to interest people from the very first sentence you write. So instead of giving me an intro quest having me run around a city talking to NPCs, why not start me off in the middle of some crazy adventure? If the author starts out the story with "You arrive in a city, and now you must go talk to Nana the Shopkeeper to learn about how to buy goatsmilk..." then can you really blame someone for assuming this story might be a little bit dull? This isn't about instant gratification, this is about starting out with an intro that gets into the audience's head and makes them want more.
Ultimately my cynicism isn't about questing in MMOs, it's about dull questing in MMOs. Yes, I didn't give FFXIV much of a chance because I've become disenchanted and lost faith that MMO writers could create a story that interested me. But although I went into the game in a skeptical state, I didn't go into it already having convinced myself I wouldn't like it, or I wouldn't have purchased it at all. And to say I didn't give it a chance I think is not entirely accurate. It's not as though I watched a video of it and quit. I started out in the starter city, did the starter city quests, left and went running between villages and reached some quests at a farm before I gave up. I did give the story a chance to interest me, in my opinion, but dull quests where you carry out the tasks more suited to a farmhand than a hero always turn me off in MMOs. Of course there have always been mini-games in Final Fantasy but they make them silly and amusing, they don't feel like chores. Well... perhaps with the exception of chocobo racing in FFX, man how I grew to loath it and it caused me a great deal of rage over how much I sucked at it, ahaha. Damn you seagulls, damn you. Why do seagulls hate chocobos anyway?
But yes, I suppose... you are right, that I had a knee-jerk reaction to a few quests that didn't interest me, then right after that happened I learned (at that time) that there wasn't any personal housing, which is something I'm attached to, so I got miffed and threw in the towel. However, after the points you've made, I see that you are someone who also appreciates the story-telling aspect of the game and if you say that it picks up quickly, then I'm inclined to concede and say that I believe you.
In that case, maybe I'll give FFXIV another go and try to make it farther along in the quests before passing judgement again. I don't currently have any MMO so I'm willing to resub again, since I did want to like the game. If it does end up giving me the enjoyment of the singleplayer Final Fantasy games after keeping with it for a while, then it will be worth any initial frustration over the adjustment to it.
Thank you. Peace, friend.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
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I dunno, Hyanmen. I really enjoy ARR and have had a blast playing it overall, but I gotta agree that the questing in that game is pretty weak.
There is a *lot* of filler quests in there - especially noticeable during the main story arc - that are clearly only there to pad the content and make it take a bit longer. I recall quests where you are literally sent out into the field to go find someone, you talk to them, and then go back to the NPC who sent you there. That's it. No task to be completed. Nothing. It's literally, "go talk to "such and such". You talk to "such and such", and then they send you straight back to the quest giver. And there's been a number of those that I've gone through. They're pure, undeniable, padding.
During one of the job questlines, I believe PGL, you're sent out to go punch a boulder, a single boulder. Then you're sent back to the quest giver to let them know you punched the boulder so you can continue the actual storyline. It's completely arbitrary. It serves absolutely no purpose. There's no storyline attached. It doesn't develop the plot at all. And there are a number of situations just like that throughout. Another is where you, for no reason at all, are sent off to run around Ul'dah picking up someone's dropped coins. No point. No story. Just pure time-padding busy-work.
The main story line is also riddled with content that just screams "filler!". As a couple examples, when you're leading up to the fight with Garuda, how you're sent all over the place, with that whole "Thanks, Mario, but our element is in another castle!" routine. Or leading up to the fight with Titan... "Yes, the world's in danger and Titan must be stopped immediately... after you go gather food items for a big party". You'd think the party could wait 'til *after* this menacing threat to the world is dealt with. Even the game calls attention to the time-wasting going on with the Titan situation, through remarks made by Y'shtola.
Half the quest content in Coerthas felt like filler to me. So much bouncing back and forth between Dragonhead and the Observatory, dealing with the Elezen and their drama. I was cheering for Dravania by the end of that; "Please, wipe out these whiny, melodramatic, uptight, emo gits, and put them out of Eorzea's misery..."
There's just so much blatant time-filler in the quests in ARR. As much as I enjoy the game, I'd be completely dishonest to not acknowledge it. It's there, and they don't even try to cleverly mask it. Frankly, I do expect better than that from SE.
To me, the questing in ARR is one of its weakest parts, right up there with the awful and inconsistent voice-acting. Speaking of voice acting (no pun intended), I wish Yoshi-P would shit or get off the pot. Have voice acting, and go all out on it. Or don't have it at all. The whole thing of having half a cut-scene voiced, then suddenly cutting to silence with chat bubbles is just odd.
Funny enough, the best story arcs I've experienced in ARR are the Hildibrand series. Hands-down. I wish all the quest content in the game was of that quality. I think they need to give Hildibrand and Nashu their own game, along with Godbert and whom ever else gets tangled up in that group. I'd play that game.
But yeah, there are aspects of ARR I definitely praise and find highly enjoyable. No question. The questing is not one of them, though.
'course, that's just me.
Thanks for your 2 cents, Pratt2112.
Yes, I do agree with you in that there is some filler content in the main story. While the plot is indeed stalling at those points in the game, the quality of the quests is left for the scriptwriters and loremasters to keep up. In fact even in the lower moments of the storyline there is no dip in the quality of the script nor the amount of lore that is provided to the player. To me some of the filler moments had the coolest bits of lore to digest, as the plot sent you to some distant locations you hadn't visited before, which had their own peoples and their stories to tell. In that way the presentation did not falter that much either. I would say that holds true in Coerthas as well, as the political scene in that place has a lot of material to draw from.
The quests would fall apart quite fast if the localization and loremasters weren't doing their work (and if the plot was weaker, of course). The fact quests do their job in this regard, and I think they do it well, is what justifies their existence (even in the filler moments). Also the fact that the world they've created is full of stories to tell. Which are also being interwoven into one another. For example when you do the ninja quest for the lightning ninjutsu the NPC references Ramuh and the Ramuh theme plays in the background. SE crafts the world around the mythos they've created for this game. The quests allow us to experience that mythos.
Of course, if you haven't or won't give it a chance, you'll be miserable like you would probably be with any MMO nowadays. I think an FF game deserves better. The world in this FF is presented thousand times better than any previous FF game could hope to. And until somebody figures out a better way to do it than letting the quest NPC's (and green NPC's, of which there are TONS) tell their stories, quests have a very firm spot in this game.
By the way, personally I thought 2.4 had a much higher quality for the VA and it felt like there was a lot more of it. The new voice actors were also quite good. I hope that's a sign of things to come.
I'm not sure why more should be expected of SE in this regard, as they've completely blown other MMO's out of the park with the presentation and plot of ARR as-is. But if they can rid the expansions of blatant filler plots, good.
You know Hyanmen a story is only as good as you let it be. If you are jaded and unable to enjoy anything because "you have seen it all before'' then you have only yourself to blame. I often hear people condemn things because it is the same story about some lone adventurer triumphing. You have only yourself to blame if you cannot set aside your prejudice and simply just enjoy something. I still love the Final Fantasy games. I enjoy them and I do not dissect everything or every game and do not compare and contrast I take each for what they are and simply love them. Fine there are some worse than others but it's the art the world and stories I like.
This attitude people have is weariness with games in general. It happens in all forms of entertainment people have the 'been there done that' feeling and dismiss things out of hand. I do feel sorry for people who cannot simply enjoy things and get hung up on the small stuff and make themselves miserable. What I cannot accept however is when they try to bring everybody down by constantly disparaging or saying with incredulity how anyone can enjoy something. Well buster I feel sorry for you then if you cannot see the magic of this game. Your loss.
Well, you're kinda using the game's stronger aspects to bolster a weaker one here. But it does bring to light another problem with how the quests are handled. When they have all this great lore and these magnificent, terrifying enemies to deal with, you would think they'd really do their best to build up those situations to make them feel as epic as possible. Yet, in so many cases, they do the opposite, by giving you arbitrary, time-wasting activities to run off and do.
The example of going off to gather foodstuff for a party when there's this imminent threat putting everyone in danger just makes no sense at all. It feels like they put the real storyline on -pause- because the designers felt like you were moving along too quickly, and threw in a handful of completely irrelevant side-tasks to spread it out more. To be clear, you're on a very specific mission: To gather information on defeating Titan. It's made abundantly clear to you that his being summoned is a "Very Bad Thing". Time is short, and the safety of Eorzea is at stake. Shizzle is real, yo.
Under those circumstances, it makes absolutely no sense to be sending you all over the place, gathering food for a party. Maybe after the fight, when there's reason to celebrate, and time to do so, they could ask you to help out. It takes what is otherwise a pretty tense situation, and completely deflates it. "He's uber dangerous, not to be taken lightly, and must be put down yesterday.... but, eh, never mind... he can wait."
Same with the Garuda situation. You'd think people assisting in something as serious as Garuda ('cause they really do build her up as a serious threat) would have a better handle on exactly what kind of element you need, rather than sending you on fruitless, time-wasting endeavors, giving her more time to gain power. And the way it's played out in the story arc, as I recall, is people just keep "getting it wrong". It's a slightly less arbitrary way of time-padding, as at least the tasks you're doing are directly related to the ultimate goal (getting at Garuda). But it's still very clearly padding in how they did it.
My beef with the stuff in Coerthas was how much you got sent back and forth, often to the same exact spot you'd just left, to carry out different tasks. Also, the way they drag out the quests there is by making the Elezen seem like an unbelievably dense group of people. "I know you already risked your own life for us by doing "this", and "this", and "this" for "so and so" and "so and so", and that's cool. But I still don't trust you, and will not help you until you risk your life again by doing "this" and "this" for me". And that exact routine plays out multiple times. They don't even change up the theme. It's pure "copy and paste" style time-filler.
Rather than engrossing me in their lore, etc, it made me think of the Elezen as complete a-holes whose plight and politics I couldn't have cared less about. They're a train-wreck in progress, for which the only cure is a hasty, Lemmings-style jaunt off the nearest very high cliff, with me standing by cheering them on. I could have ended up thinking "that was really cool" by the end. Instead, I was just sick of the place and glad to be out of there.
When I say "I expect more from SE" - is that they could have come up with better quest lines than they did - especially where it matters. I've seen much better content from them - right in FFXIV in fact - as well as in other FF titles. Again, the Hildibrand quests - silly as they are - are done extremely well. Far better than most anything else I did in that game, quest/story-wise. And to think he and Nashu were intended to be a one-off deal to help introduce Inn-Rooms in 1.0. I think their introduction is one of the best things that's happened to FFXIV under Yoshi-P. There's more personality, even depth, behind those two than there is behind most of the other characters you encounter.
So when I say I expect more from SE, I say it because I've seen them do it, many times.
So, just reiterating.. the questing in that game remains one of its weakest parts, for me.
As for them blowing other MMOs out of the water... eh... well I'll just say that's 100% personal opinion. I've experienced what, for me, is far better storytelling, and better presentation in other MMOs of late than what FFXIV offers. Of course, that's 100% my personal opinion.
Anyway.. good talk
Now I have to get ready for work
You taking part of the story and dropping the rest.
During the Titan build-up. The guy wants you to prove to him your capable of defeating Titan.. that is all the side quest are.. chances for you to prove yourself... not only to Wheiskaet but all the Company of Heroes.
You have to remember, what you think are "World destroying events" the normal peon will think, well it is not affecting my world currently, so it is no big deal. It is the same thing with current IRL world events.
The entire Coerthas chain servers as an introduction into Ishagard and the political nightmare involving the church... you think it is bad now wait till Heavensward. It has nothing to do with Elezen, except a lot of Ishgards are Elezen.
On the way to level 50 you had to prove you were a true hero. The quests post 50, you get your due props. Hell I hated it when I wanted to track down Ivy, but I had more important things to do, that involved just some damn meeting between heads of state. I wanted to be running around finding the bad guy, not sitting in some damn meeting.
fs23otm already touched on some of the important points. What you end up doing in the game is justified. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it's not arbitrary. The Company of Heroes questline in particular was extremely clear about the reason for sending you out to "gather food".
Coerthan people being dense is as canon as it can get, too. They don't "seem" dense or wary; they are. And the reasons for this are laid out pretty explicitly throughout the questline too. Yes, it works as a plot machine for stalling - but they are not made to be that way because it can stall the player - they are that way because that is the mythos the world team has created for Coerthas and Ishgard. It is extremely believable, knowing what happens in Ishgard and their past. Their wariness is the opposite of arbitrary. In short, the game never lets the plot machine become the horse while the mythos is the wagon. Frankly in most MMO's it is clear that the mythos exists to support the plot (secondary) and gameplay systems (primary).
Of course SE can do better if they are given three months to create four quests (as in Hildebrand quests). The devs could have simply removed the filler and just left out the good stuff on corresponding levels. That would've made for a quite choppy story experience though, and made players focus on sidequests instead of the overarching main plot (so the filler comments wouldn't have ended there either). Whether that would be "better" is pretty subjective, and SE simply chose differently. SE could have also delayed the game's release to, say, December. As the result we would have gotten a more coherent main story but we would've had to wait for many months to get there, too. There's no one perfect solution here.
While talking about the personality of the characters there's no good solution there either. The game fleshes out the characters if you talk to them during the main quest (green NPC's). Making those dialogues a part of the story itself would have bloated it even more, and probably would've been classified as "filler" either way.