Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Merrith

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Thor 2 is masterpiece of cinema next to Capt Marvel. And yes, they stated, they didn't show, she was uber, for no in-universe logical reason. Someone uses the space stone to make an spacecraft engine, it explodes next to her, and she's now the power cosmic. fucking lol. She fights jude law, a kree, which we aren't shown how powerful they are supposed to be in that film. basically she fights a dude and flies around in space. She is a mary sue. Her power was not developed or earned. She is cheap girl power.

Wanda on the other hand, unlike your shaky recollection is developed as a character and her power grows over several films. By infinity war she was holding her own vs 5 Stone Thanos while simultaneously destroying the 6th stone inside vision's head:

d6ff42a5aa40466a4da94e736b7402be.gif


Yes by End Game she is fucking Thanos (no stones) up big time, it's earned.

I brought up Drax specifically as an example of 1 trope used poorly and its ripple affect on story and character development, and how it ruined Drax as a character. Not as a direct comparison to FF14. But yes, your character, the protagonist, is completely ruined by FF14 constantly misusing that and other tropes over and over and over again. Yes, other NPCs are likewise ruined, but most of the time they don't even bother to develop any of the other characters. They are for the most part 1 dimensional random name generated quest icons, They may as well just be Giant Exclamation points without bodies. This is Main Scenario Characters btw, your "crew" which the story is centered around. Everything feels fucking cheap and unearned. Every single cut scene is Kai Lang from ME3. They are poorly written, it forces it's plot points to happen regardless of its affects on the player or the story. You may like the plot highlights, but as a story It's garbage from beginning through at least the beginning of SB (which is where I am now), and most likely through the rest of the game, simply because the foundation is so poorly laid. I was hoping they would use the time spent away from the main NPCs to actually build them up and develop them, basically retcon them in to real characters with actual personalities after the atrocity that was ARR, but so far, nope. Still 1 dimensional robots without any emotional connection or investment whatsoever.

People who say it has a "good story" I think, they mean it has a good plot? Well not plot, like a good outline? like the overall structure of the story, major milestones? In the same way anime lovers think dragonball Z has a "good" story. No, it has over the top "plot" things over and over and over again. If someone summarized the recap it may sound cool to an outsider, but the connective tissue just isn't there to piece plot points together. It's just a very poorly put together, it's missing too many key ingredients to be considered a good story. writing, dialogue, pacing, stakes, character development, etc, etc, etc.

Let me give you a simple example. early in the story you are tracking down a "merchant" who is selling villagers to the lizard folk tribes, or whatever the plot was pretty forgettable. Anyway, your character goes to a spot to ambush the merchant and the lizardfolk, you are accompanied by some great company soldiers.

Surprise he was tricking you, you are being ambushed. Wave after wave of lizard people attack you.

After you effortlessly defeat every single wave without ever dropping below 98% health, none of your npcs are even injured, you have clearly obliterated the entire tribe/species of lizardmen, you jump to a cutscene where "oh noes, we're outnumbered, we have to fall back, we're being overrun! everyone is dying. oh noes we're captured, they are going to tie us up and sacrifice us to their fire god."

WTF?

This is an instanced type area where you are deleveled to the content, it's personalized to you. It is completely disjarring how poorly this transition happens, the cut scene makes fuckall sense in terms of the gameplay you just experienced. The gameplay is 180 off of the cutscene, obviously they wanted this cutscene to happen in this way, but the cut scene doesn't even trigger until you've killed like 5 waves of lizardmen. This is poor design and ruins any story element you were going for.

If you want to beat me, then beat me. Again this is instanced, personalized content, you can do whatever you fucking want. Spawn 30 waves of 30 lizardmen. Take the fucking gloves off and have them actually deal damage. Actually overwhelm me, kill off the NPCs. have the cut scene where i'm overrun and captured trigger when the NPCs are dead and my health drops to 20% or something. Make it make sense.

This is just a small one off example, but this kind of shit happens over and over and over again. Glaring inconsistencies and plotholes abound. A good story sucks you in to a game, FF14's takes you out of it every cutscene cus some other dumb thing happens that has you rolling your eyes or shaking your head.

Wall of text, did not read.

For all that scene at the end, Wanda still knows she isn't winning she's just trying to destroy the mind gem and attempting to stall Thanos (which in the end loltimegem doesn't matter anyways). It's not like she's hurting him in that scene above. It's almost worse in fact because he's 5 gem Thanos and she literally needed Capt America and Black Widow to save her and Vision from his 2 henchmen earlier in the film. In general her overall total story arc they've done a good job of showing her power building (although that's basically all WandaVision)...but not between her struggling against B team guys at start of Endgame and suddenly being able to 1v1 Thanos while being snapped in between, too.

Seriously, buy a skip. The claim they develop none of the characters is just laughable to any of us who have played through the whole MSQ.
 

Sylas

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Seriously, buy a skip.
I've definitely looked in to the skips but they won't let you skip endwalker and i'm already mostly through this game. If I could go back and get my 100+ hrs back and started with a skip i definitely would have.
The claim they develop none of the characters is just laughable to any of us who have played through the whole MSQ.

This is the shit i'm talking about. When? When do they develop any of these characters? When does that start? more lies.

here, describe them to me. Explain them. Red Letter Media style, explain these characters to me:

 

Chris

Potato del Grande
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Ihere, describe them to me. Explain them. Red Letter Media style, explain these characters to me:


Haurchefant: Gay twink who loves nude squats, will risk everything for those he owes his loyalty to.

Ysale: Deluded and determined heretic.

Estinien: Driven by hatred and a loner.

Alphinaud: Idealistic child prodigy with a punctured ego.

That's the Heavensward party. I can post the events which develop the characters but you won't read it.

The Scions have their main character development to come but you should have already seen that Y'shtola is intelligent can be reckless and is rebellious/demanding with her mentor Mayota.

You are so autistically fixated on finding fault that you can't sit back and enjoy it, I also don't think you have the reading comprehension to remember what is happening.
 
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Sylas

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Haurchefant: Gay twink who loves nude squats, will risk everything for those his owes his loyalty to.

Ysale: Deluded and determined heretic.

Estinien: Driven by hatred and a loner.

Alphinaud: Idealistic child prodigy with a punctured ego.

That's the Heavensward party. I can post the events which develop the characters but you won't read it.

The Scions have their main character development to come but you should have already seen that Y'shtola is intelligent can be reckless and is rebellious/demanding with her mentor Mayota.

You are so autistically fixated on finding fault that you can't sit back and enjoy it, I also don't think you have the reading comprehension to remember what is happening.
I see your reading comprehension is still lacking. I already stated the only time they bother to make any character more than 1 dimensional robot and spend 2 minutes developing them (not that they are well developed or anything, look at your descriptions), they immediately kill them off or make them the bad guy. Yet another shitty trope used poorly over and over and over again making the story dumber than had they not bothered.

So lets review your list:

Dead, Dead, turned into bad guy.

Alpino, the guy i've spent 100+ hours with, the best you can describe him is "idealistic". Wow much development. Great insight. What storytelling. How hasn't this thing won all of the hugo awards?

You don't think it's a sign of poor story telling that i'm 2 expansions in, 100+hours of cutscenes and i'm allegedly just now going to start to get character development from my party? Ystonya is the first scion NPC you actually talk to, you meet her at lvl 12 fighting the gobollygoo. And no, I've seen none of those things so far. Not a single scion can be called intelligent and other than the fact that she has a Mentor there's zero interactions to indicate she's rebellious or demanding. She's a plank of wood just like the rest of the scions with the personality to boot.
 
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Merrith

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I've definitely looked in to the skips but they won't let you skip endwalker and i'm already mostly through this game. If I could go back and get my 100+ hrs back and started with a skip i definitely would have.


This is the shit i'm talking about. When? When do they develop any of these characters? When does that start? more lies.

here, describe them to me. Explain them. Red Letter Media style, explain these characters to me:



If I'm understanding you're still in HW, yes? You're in the 2nd expansion of a game with 5 expansions. I'm not wasting my time writing a text wall. You're just going to keep playing it and complaining about it no matter what at this point. I might as well get full value waiting for the full review first and foremost.
 

Chris

Potato del Grande
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I see your reading comprehension is still lacking. I already stated the only time they bother to make any character more than 1 dimensional robot and spend 2 minutes developing them (not that they are well developed or anything, look at your descriptions), they immediately kill them off or make them the bad guy. Yet another shitty trope used poorly over and over and over again making the story dumber than had they not bothered.
This isn't as bad as you say but you've already met the final bosses of the 3rd and 4th expansions and they appear regularly until the end.

So lets review your list:

Dead, Dead, turned into bad guy.

Alpino, the guy i've spent 100+ hours with, the best you can describe him is "idealistic". Wow much development. Great insight. What storytelling. How hasn't this thing won all of the hugo awards?
Estinien will return and you already played the bit where he isn't a bad guy anymore, this is why I say you bad reading comprehension... hell it was voice acted even.

I'm not writing paragraphs of text you won't read so fuck off, I did your RLM challenge. Any good Star Wars character is equally as shallow as you say.

You don't think it's a sign of poor story telling that i'm 2 expansions in, 100+hours of cutscenes and i'm allegedly just now going to start to get character development from my party?
Yes. Everyone agrees with you. We told you 100 times that ARR is not good. We told you that the 3rd and 4th expansions is the amazing story we are talking about, you just finished the 1st expansion.

You keep "forgetting" this and trolling about the ARR story.

Ystonya is the first scion NPC you actually talk to, you meet her at lvl 12 fighting the gobollygoo. And no, I've seen none of those things so far. Not a single scion can be called intelligent and other than the fact that she has a Mentor there's zero interactions to indicate she's rebellious or demanding. She's a plank of wood just like the rest of the scions with the personality to boot.
Have you not met Matoya yet? We turn up to her cave multiple times throughout the game where she and Yshtola roast each other and we make her do some difficult magic shit for us.
 

Folanlron

Trakanon Raider
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Ystonya is the first scion NPC you actually talk to, you meet her at lvl 12 fighting the gobollygoo.

You do know that this changes depending on starting city .. right ?

Gridania You meet Papa and Yda

Ul'dah is Thancred + Minfilia(Much earlier vs the other 2 cities)

Limsa is Y'shtola(Only cause her sister is there at the start)
 
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Sylas

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This isn't as bad as you say but you've already met the final bosses of the 3rd and 4th expansions and they appear regularly until the end.
Oh it's definitely as bad as that. as far as story and character development, you've already confirmed by failing the RLM test.
Estinien will return and you already played the bit where he isn't a bad guy anymore, this is why I say you bad reading comprehension... hell it was voice acted even.
Yep we "saved" him and immediately did the dumbest shit possible and threw niddhoggs eye's off a bridge for them to immediately to be retrieved and put back in play again. Literally just putting them on the ground and throwing a towel over them would have been a better solution. World has mechs and shit but never invented storage chests, or locks, or magic to seal things? endless examples of your character and everyone around you being an idiot doing dumb shit in cut scenes so "plot" can happen.

I'm not writing paragraphs of text you won't read so fuck off, I did your RLM challenge. Any good Star Wars character is equally as shallow as you say.
You (well, the game's story) failed the RLM challenge you mean? 100+ hours of cut scenes and you can manage a single word or 2 to describe these characters?

Prequel and Sequel Star Wars characters fail this test too (hence the point of the RLM video) but no, no other "story" game fails as hard as this one. Seriously unnamed guard's in skyrim "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee", That guy has more personality and character depth than the protagonist or any of the scions in FF14.

Yes. Everyone agrees with you. We told you 100 times that ARR is not good. We told you that the 3rd and 4th expansions is the amazing story we are talking about, you just finished the 1st expansion.

You keep "forgetting" this and trolling about the ARR story.
Uh nope. I've been told by various posters here that the story starts to get good from "near the end of ARR" to "post ARR" all the way to "heavensward". HW is the latest anyone claims the story starts to pick up. No one has claimed it doesn't start to get good until Shadowbringers until you, just now, this is just more goal post moving. So now you are saying only the last 2 expansions are any good? Stormblood definitely seems like a downgrade from HW so far.
Have you not met Matoya yet? We turn up to her cave multiple times throughout the game where she and Yshtola roast each other and we make her do some difficult magic shit for us.
Yes we've met her. They've had near zero interactions between them other than monotone, poorly written dialogue. nothing witty or "roasting" about it.

Listen man I'll make all of you a deal. Other than a handful of newbie questions where you guys actually knew the answer, for the most part this thread hasn't been helpful to me, at all. I think Koush is the only one who actually gave me a legitimate answer to a question (about how interrupts work and the flashing red cast bar). Everything else, you guys either don't know how the game works and give me bad/wrong info or people just avoid the question and go off on tangents with people making up excuses on why this story is so god awful.

So I'll bow out of this thread, if you could simply acknowledge what I said 18+ pages ago:

Anyone who thinks this "type" of "story telling" is good, isn't starting this game in 2022. They are not posting here as a new player asking questions trying to figure out what this MMO has to offer. The game has a lot going for it in terms of sheer content and things to do in this game, once you get past the tutorial and get to experience the actual game, its good. Especially how it's designed so that none of that content is ever really obsoleted, as far as MMO players are concerned, this game is worth playing. It has many good things to offer, but story definitely isn't one of them. For anyone starting this game today, the story is the weakest part of this game, and it's worst selling point. Stop telling new players that this game has a great story, or worse, if you don't like the story the game has nothing else to offer. Anyone who would find this "style" of "story" good, has already played this game.

Fucked up thing is, some posters freely acknowledge this, hell half of you admit that the "story" isn't for everyone. Except you falsely equivocate that the story is the only thing this game has going for it, so if you don't enjoy the story you can't possibly enjoy the game, which is patently false. Hell the first few pages of this derail all began with one person (I forget who) arguing this very thing and everyone else shitting on him saying that no, the story is fucking great.
 
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Chris

Potato del Grande
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Oh it's definitely as bad as that. as far as story and character development, you've already confirmed by failing the RLM test.

Yep we "saved" him and immediately did the dumbest shit possible and threw niddhoggs eye's off a bridge for them to immediately to be retrieved and put back in play again. Literally just putting them on the ground and throwing a towel over them would have been a better solution. World has mechs and shit but never invented storage chests, or locks, or magic to seal things? endless examples of your character and everyone around you being an idiot doing dumb shit in cut scenes so "plot" can happen.


You (well, the game's story) failed the RLM challenge you mean? 100+ hours of cut scenes and you can manage a single word or 2 to describe these characters?

Prequel and Sequel Star Wars characters fail this test too (hence the point of the RLM video) but no, no other "story" game fails as hard as this one. Seriously unnamed guard's in skyrim "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee", That guy has more personality and character depth than the protagonist or any of the scions in FF14.


Uh nope. I've been told by various posters here that the story starts to get good from "near the end of ARR" to "post ARR" all the way to "heavensward". HW is the latest anyone claims the story starts to pick up. No one has claimed it doesn't start to get good until Shadowbringers until you, just now, this is just more goal post moving. So now you are saying only the last 2 expansions are any good? Stormblood definitely seems like a downgrade from HW so far.

Yes we've met her. They've had near zero interactions between them other than monotone, poorly written dialogue. nothing witty or "roasting" about it.

Listen man I'll make all of you a deal. Other than a handful of newbie questions where you guys actually knew the answer, for the most part this thread hasn't been helpful to me, at all. I think Koush is the only one who actually gave me a legitimate answer to a question (about how interrupts work and the flashing red cast bar). Everything else, you guys either don't know how the game works and give me bad/wrong info or people just avoid the question and go off on tangents with people making up excuses on why this story is so god awful.

So I'll bow out of this thread, if you could simply acknowledge what I said 18+ pages ago:

Anyone who thinks this "type" of "story telling" is good, isn't starting this game in 2022. They are not posting here as a new player asking questions trying to figure out what this MMO has to offer. The game has a lot going for it in terms of sheer content and things to do in this game, once you get past the tutorial and get to experience the actual game, its good. Especially how it's designed so that none of that content is ever really obsoleted, as far as MMO players are concerned, this game is worth playing. It has many good things to offer, but story definitely isn't one of them. For anyone starting this game today, the story is the weakest part of this game, and it's worst selling point. Stop telling new players that this game has a great story, or worse, if you don't like the story the game has nothing else to offer. Anyone who would find this "style" of "story" good, has already played this game.

Fucked up thing is, some posters freely acknowledge this, hell half of you admit that the "story" isn't for everyone. Except you falsely equivocate that the story is the only thing this game has going for it, so if you don't enjoy the story you can't possibly enjoy the game, which is patently false. Hell the first few pages of this derail all began with one person (I forget who) arguing this very thing and everyone else shitting on him saying that no, the story is fucking great.
I skim read your post. I answered the RLM challenge in a way that:

1) Didn't waste both our time on information you wouldn't read - I actually deleted stuff from what I wrote - I can write more - especially if I can use Shadowbringers/Endwalker events.

2) Was as detailed as the actual RLM challenge "good" answers, yes I was there when the deep magic was written bitch.

Han Solo for example was "Handsome, dashing, roguish", each person literally said a word or sentence. The point of the challenge is that when faced with Queen Amidala they couldn't say ANYTHING.

Now can you just fuck off? I wish I could ignore you twice as I keep clicking "show ignored content" for some reason.
 

Korillo

Molten Core Raider
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I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I would personally rank them as:
1. Shadowbringers
2. Endwalker
3. Heavensward
4. Stormblood
5. ARR

Most games don't have an interesting enough story for me to not want to skip most of the cutscenes/dialogue, but the FF14 story held my interest all the way through. I had to slog through ARR -> Stormblood. I could only do MSQ for a bit before I would switch to just playing a different job or different game. It took me a long time to get to Shadowbringers, but I went through Shadowbringers and Endwalker fairly quickly. I actually wanted to play the MSQ because I wanted to see what would happen next.

It's a bit silly to argue though. All entertainment is subjective. There are people who exist who love The Last Jedi Star Wars movie. This is hard for me to believe, but I begrudgingly believe it and will not tire myself out arguing with them about it. You will either end up enjoying the story or you won't.

The thing I enjoy most about FF14 is that the game doesn't punish you for not logging in. I never really feel like I'm missing out on anything if I don't log in for a week or even a month. It has been a nice change of pace from WoW.
 
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Folanlron

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I don't think that people realize just how much of a cluster fuck 1.0 was, they literally scraped together a story out of what they had from it..

And yes it isn't nearly as strong as what they have come out with recently but during ARR patch content, you can really tell when the "actual" writing team took over.
 

Sylas

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I skim read your post. I answered the RLM challenge in a way that:

1) Didn't waste both our time on information you wouldn't read - I actually deleted stuff from what I wrote - I can write more - especially if I can use Shadowbringers/Endwalker events.
e02e5ffb5f980cd8262cf7f0ae00a4a9_press-x-to-doubt-memes-memesuper-la-noire-doubt-meme_419-238.jpg


remember all it takes for me to stop posting in this thread is a simple "Yeah, you're right"
 
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Prodigal

Shitlord, Offender of the Universe
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But you are literally wrong on everything.
Well he’s right that this game isn’t for him - and while I think several have agreed with that point he apparently continues to play - because someone here thought he might enjoy it once.
 
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