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Final Fantasy XIV's Story Helped To Define The MMO As One Of The Best - MMORPG.com
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Final Fantasy XIV's Story Helped To Define The MMO As One Of The Best - MMORPG.com
As the 2010s came to a close this week, Bradford and the staff look back at one of the more influential MMORPGs on the market to date: Final Fantasy XIV, and more specifically how its story helped to define its place in the MMO world after its rebirth years ago.
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It's not even just ARR anymore, it's frustrating having to have my friends go through ARR, then the post ARR content, then Heavensward, post content, then Stormblood, then post stormblood content then the new expansion.
I get they want to tell a story, and if you skip the post content it would make the story fragmented, but for people who really don't care they should allow you to just start the next expansion when you are the level for it and maybe even finish just the main story quests (non post) for each one. I can't think of an MMORPG that requires you to do every story quest to access new content other than FFXIV.
It's a decent story for an MMORPG, but it is really long and drawn out, I've watched all cutscenes and done every main quest and while it was enjoyable, it was enjoyable at the time for each expansion. Watching a friend get mad that they cannot try the next expansion because they have 20+ more hours of quests to grind through each time and have them quit just sucks.
The time investment was ok for games in the first wave of MMOs. Requiring 300+ hours to get to the current game etc etc. It's just not as appealing to the majority of people anymore. I still leveled 2 characters to 60 on classic wow, I've got a 50 on P99 green, but no way in hell I'd level another character from scratch on FF14.
I agree. The amount of time isn't even the biggest problem, it's how uneventful most of the quests are, and how a majority of the post content is just :
walk to quest giver get quest
go to quest objective which is usually an NPC to talk to
go back to quest giver get next part
go to the next NPC to talk to
Get next quest in chain
Repeat above for about 4 quests until a dungeon quest comes up or a quest where you go to a circle and fight 3 enemies
and repeat.
It just must really suck for people who don't care about the story, as it's just filler quests to push it along until a dungeon unlock or something.
It is a clone though, just not a bad one.
Yeah, right. For that there has been an exodus from WoW to FFXIV specially since the last WoW expansion with more and more and more new WoW refugees coming to FFXIV. And they started to come before that with Heavensward but with Stormblood and, specialy, Shadowbringers the numbers of ex-Wow players is huge in the game.
It's amazing how there are people that still thinks WoW invented something and everything else is a clone and have to be bad, of course.
Also is a heavy based story game. The game isn't about to get to the last raids and dungeons forgeting there is a game behind that (cof cof WoW cof cof). One of the important things is the story, the progression along side it. You can't start a mmorpg like is another and FFXIV doesn't work just like WoW.
It's a very coop, very story driven game. If those aren't your things, isn't a game for you to start. And still there is people the focus the game just like that, getting to the end ignoring the story... but the game isn't code with that in mind.
So for myself,i feel FFX is the last of the great story telling games that also combined great characters,now it is all downhill.
Within FFXIV,the problem was a severe lacking of voice overs,you NEED voice overs in games now a days,this isn't the 90's.
Not a surprise either because SE has been delivering a lot of slack games of late.Recently playing the Octopath Traveler,same thing,the voice overs were done shotty,hit n miss,sometimes 2 sentences or more on screen but the characters just gives a grunt.
Game devs are cutting corners in all games now,you might get nice dialogue,voice overs,cut scene's but then the entire game play is awful or just barely acceptable.Square is not the developer it used to be,they are pulling some strings on lazy work the last 5 years or so.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Nothing from 1.0 is like how the game is now.
The game has voice over, very good one specially starting from Heavensward. But not in everything, just in the important story quests cinematics.
Voice over doesn't make a good story, or playability. It's just comfortable to have it and japanese jrpg genre isn't known to have full voice over like Old Republic or Elder Scrolls Online, it's mostly part of the genre.
In my opinion, I prefer a good story that I have to read that a meh story full voice over.
Yeah, ESO drops new players into the new zones, and you really don't need to have completed the class story. I still like this game though.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Yep, and it's only going to get worse. I have a feeling they will start to see less and less new players stick around as they add more expansions. Literal thousands of quests (most of which are not good, at all) as a wall of tasks for new players is a stupid idea.
The best solution would be to prompt players with two options: Watch the custscenes or play the quests themselves. Again, 99% of the quests in FFXIV are shitty; with the 1% being the big MSQ arcs. All of the filler and post-MSQ quests are the worst in MMO history.
"Go talk to this guy, now go back and talk to the first guy, now go back to the second guy, now go across the map to talk to guy number 3, then go all the way back to guy number 1" Riveting!
I love FFXIV so I cut it a lot of slack, but there is some quasi mythical bullshit around how good the story is. The Base story of A realm reborn is tripe, boring, overly cliched tripe. The Patch stuff, if you played it at the time was semi interesting as the forumula for the story was not yet set in stone.
Now yes, the Heavensward and Shadowbringers stories were real FF stories, Heavanswards was better all round, unless you are a fan of teenage angst drama, Because shadowbringers takes the biscuit on that one, though if you can get past that element the rest of the story is very enjoyable..
I really Enjoyed the stories in the expansions personally (Though like I said before, Shadowbringers has a bit too much emo angst drama for my taste but otherwise it was very enjoyable) but when ever I get some one to play I have to basically cheerlead them on through the first 50-70 hours of their game time, thats basically a months worth of gaming atleast that I have to keep saying "It gets better, it gets better"
I never have to do this with SWTORS storyline, nor Eso's (Which is not held up as a beacon of storytelling) nor even wows.
I want FF 14 to be recognised for the fantastic product it is BUT to say its story defines it as one of the best, when nearly a third of that story is utter garbage is hyperbole.
I will revisit this once they release the new game + and ARR MSQ improvements but until then, FFXIVs story is a Good one in the end, hidden behind 50 hours of the most boring busywork story telling ever seen in any mmo.
That said.....individual stories were never supposed to be a defining component of MMORPGs. Just because this one title is able to succeed with it, doesn't mean I don't personally believe it was a "wrong turn"{ incorporated into the genre overall.