Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Flinch · Mar 8, 2022

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

You're right in the sense that as a compelling or engaging story it falls flat. I wouldn't say the characters 'fail' the RLM test.

The problem is that a lot of the characters are just very archetypal and don't really extend a whole lot beyond that. There's a lot of what I feel to be missed opportunities.

The Scions,

Alphinaud - bratty, idealistic, egotistical boy genius who gets served a heaping slice of humble pie and reflects on his actions for like 10 minutes. You get what he was going for here, but he's down on himself for like 2 MSQs and then he's back to being an arrogant dick.

Y'Shtola - sassy, idealistic egotistical cat girl genius who literally suffers no real negative repercussions from doing something incredibly risky/dangerous beyond going 'blind', which affects her literally not at all. Continues to be insufferable and arrogant, yet the average fan moons over her cos she has 'amazing' one-liners. I'd say that she (along with most of the other Scions) suffered from a changing storyline. (Originally they were meant to die at the events at the end of ARR but ended up coming back.)

Alisaie - probably the most well rounded out of the group, but that's not really saying much. Has some doubts, questions what's going on, has issues with losing people and is stubborn/independent. Probably has the most fleshed out arc out of all the characters but it's still really one-note.

Estinien - My name is Estinien, you killed my father, prepare to die, dragon. Revenge seeker who goes to terrible lengths. Matures and eases back from his desire from revenge. A sort of inverse Arthas.

Minfillia - Functionally useless.

Urianger - Awkward bookworm who has social anxiety and is probably moderately autistic.

Yda - lmao. Gets even worse in Stormblood. Drags down an entire expansion with her bullshit. The Queen Amidala of XIV, imo.

Thancred - "Ladies man"/"dashing rogue." Another character where I feel that there was a missed opportunity with. Gets fucked up in the Lifestream, but we, again, don't see any real repercussions from that (although apparently Shadowbringers dives into this a little?)

There's a number of interesting supporting characters (Raubahn, Hien, Gosetsu, the Sultana, for example) who have some interesting stories. But the entirety of the MSQ is/has been really subpar for the most part, given how hyped up fans of the game have made the story to be.

It's okay-to-decent for an MMORPG or a JRPG, but it's nothing amazing. Props to them for telling and building a mostly coherent story over 10 years or whatever, but people who hold this up as some sort of stellar example of narrative need to go read a fucking book or three.

EDIT: I will say that encounters definitely ramped up quite a bit in Stormblood and the game is fun to play and enjoyable. I just don't find the MSQ to be as amazing as people make it out to be.

Cybsled · Mar 8, 2022

Counter point: Play through Shadowbringers

Sylas · Mar 8, 2022

Flinch said:
You're right in the sense that as a compelling or engaging story it falls flat. I wouldn't say the characters 'fail' the RLM test.

The problem is that a lot of the characters are just very archetypal and don't really extend a whole lot beyond that. There's a lot of what I feel to be missed opportunities.

The Scions,

Alphinaud - bratty, idealistic, egotistical boy genius who gets served a heaping slice of humble pie and reflects on his actions for like 10 minutes. You get what he was going for here, but he's down on himself for like 2 MSQs and then he's back to being an arrogant dick.

Y'Shtola - sassy, idealistic egotistical cat girl genius who literally suffers no real negative repercussions from doing something incredibly risky/dangerous beyond going 'blind', which affects her literally not at all. Continues to be insufferable and arrogant, yet the average fan moons over her cos she has 'amazing' one-liners. I'd say that she (along with most of the other Scions) suffered from a changing storyline. (Originally they were meant to die at the events at the end of ARR but ended up coming back.)

Alisaie - probably the most well rounded out of the group, but that's not really saying much. Has some doubts, questions what's going on, has issues with losing people and is stubborn/independent. Probably has the most fleshed out arc out of all the characters but it's still really one-note.

Estinien - My name is Estinien, you killed my father, prepare to die, dragon. Revenge seeker who goes to terrible lengths. Matures and eases back from his desire from revenge. A sort of inverse Arthas.

Minfillia - Functionally useless.

Urianger - Awkward bookworm who has social anxiety and is probably moderately autistic.

Yda - lmao. Gets even worse in Stormblood. Drags down an entire expansion with her bullshit. The Queen Amidala of XIV, imo.

Thancred - "Ladies man"/"dashing rogue." Another character where I feel that there was a missed opportunity with. Gets fucked up in the Lifestream, but we, again, don't see any real repercussions from that (although apparently Shadowbringers dives into this a little?)

There's a number of interesting supporting characters (Raubahn, Hien, Gosetsu, the Sultana, for example) who have some interesting stories. But the entirety of the MSQ is/has been really subpar for the most part, given how hyped up fans of the game have made the story to be.

It's okay-to-decent for an MMORPG or a JRPG, but it's nothing amazing. Props to them for telling and building a mostly coherent story over 10 years or whatever, but people who hold this up as some sort of stellar example of narrative need to go read a fucking book or three.

EDIT: I will say that encounters definitely ramped up quite a bit in Stormblood and the game is fun to play and enjoyable. I just don't find the MSQ to be as amazing as people make it out to be.

While I feel you give them too much credit I can agree with this for the most part. RLM style you can break them down to "Bratty, Idealistic" which yeah, great arcs there. However this is after 100+ hours of cutscenes and dialogue. That's like, 10k manuscript pages? So compare the complete lack of character development to any other character you spend 100+ hours with in a game or about 6 or 7 books worth of story with, and yeah, the story is just laughably awful.

Put any character in this game up against Any character from any other narrative. Ulfric Stormcloak. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Tyrion Lannister. Allistair. Rand Al'Thor. Literally take your pick.

As far as "Story" games go this one is not even in the top 10 of MMOs that bother having a story, definitely below SW:TOR, ESO, Secret World, etc. I'd argue it's about on par with Black Desert Online as far as story goes. Yes, it has a MSQ, it's very similar (almost a carbon copy) of ARR actually. But since the game doesn't force you to follow it most people don't even bother.

fuck even Nazeem is more fleshed out than any NPC in this game.

Flinch · Mar 8, 2022

Cybsled said:
Counter point: Play through Shadowbringers

How great is a story if it doesn't get good until 3 installments in, though?

Like, I'm not saying that the story is trash or bad, just that it is somewhat overrated by the fans. There are criticisms to be made about the story and not really being able to acknowledge it is kinda funny.

xmod2 · Mar 8, 2022

You're ignoring that it is an MMO and spent a lot of time just being a bog standard shitty mmo before deciding to pivot into being more of a traditional Final Fantasy title. When Heavensward came out, WoW was mid Warlords of Draenor. If you are playing HS now, you are going back through time to 2015 MMOs (earlier and worse when you play ARR) that have only been moderately revamped to bring it up to today's standards. Compared to the peers at the time, this shit was best in class. The fact that the story gets better and ends up delivering and resolving a lot of the character arcs started in HS (retroactively) is why people consider the game good even though it 'gets good 3 installments in'. Forcing you to go through the time capsule of old mmo design is why it's rough.

People have said time and time again (at least I have) to skip to ARR and even to Shadowbringers if you are starting now. Playing through ARR->HS->SB to get to Shadowbringers is like forcing yourself to sit through season 1 of TNG because you heard it gets good 3 seasons in. Sure, if you are already a fan you will appreciate S1 more, but if it's someone completely new to Star Trek, they're going to hate it. They can watch S1, get 2 episodes into S2 and say Star Trek TNG sucks, and people who like the show will laugh at them, the same way people in this thread are laughing at Sylas.

Argarth · Mar 8, 2022

On a completely different tangent, XIVLauncher (and hence Dalamud plugins) no workie for Steam users for now > changes to SE's login process/patch linking Steam & SE accounts.
According to the Discord, they are working hard on a fix. Doesn't appear to be terminal, but no ETA.

Cybsled · Mar 8, 2022

Flinch said:
How great is a story if it doesn't get good until 3 installments in, though?

Like, I'm not saying that the story is trash or bad, just that it is somewhat overrated by the fans. There are criticisms to be made about the story and not really being able to acknowledge it is kinda funny.

Deep Space 9 would like a word with you

Keep in mind ARR->EW is essentially a 10 year story arc. ARR is mostly world building. HW continues on that trend, but tries to narrow the scope of the story for that expansion. SB gets grief because the story is sort of disjointed - The Othgard part is overall much better, and post-SB feels better than the .0 version. SB more importantly introduces some extremely important characters and concepts.

ShB takes all those previous storybeats and connects most of them. You get payoffs for all that ground work, and it even retroactively makes the prior stuff seem better.

EW is basically tying up the final major loose ends that weren’t resolved in ShB. I think overall it was less consistent than ShB, but the highs were very high in the expansion and it delivers some good emotional moments.

I think one thing that stands out is by the time you get to ShB, the Scions feel less like co-workers/quest givers and more like friends. There is a great part in EW where you are up against a time limit and lots of players got anxiety because it’s implied that if you fail to make it, the scions might get murdered. They twist this knife a bit further when a scene comes later when 2 characters that probably love your character the most encounter the threat alone. Without the prior character and emotional development, those types of scenes would be less impactful

... · Mar 8, 2022

they would do well to re-do a lot of ARR. though i'm sure they would prefer to just begin crafting the next storyline from the ground up with their well oiled machine.

instead of sinking money into 10 year old content.

But still. if each update they re-did some early scenes and worked their way back fixing some early story lines, it would help a lot with people who are just trying the story.*

Flinch · Mar 8, 2022

Cybsled said:
Deep Space 9 would like a word with you

I'm not as familiar with DS9 as with TNG, but I think I get what you're saying. Like, first season or so of TNG is outright horrible with some of the worst Trek done (including that African planet episode.)

But people don't tout Season 1 of TNG as being great. And GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire isn't lauded because it got good in Feast for Crows. EDIT: Fuck me for missing xmod's post talking directly about S1 of TNG.

I get that there are examples and instances of media 'finding their way' after a rough start, which is cool. And I get that there's worldbuilding and the such going on. But I find that the overall narrative is lacking. You can worldbuild and tell an interesting story. HW does a really good job of setting up Ishgard, telling an interesting (although somewhat typical story -- established church is secretly something sinister. Not groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it) and a lot of the Eastern stuff in SB is really well fleshed out and does story telling/worldbuilding in an engaging way. (Not so much for the Ala Mhigo elements, imo, but we seem to disagree there, haha.) For that specific expansion, I think it would've worked a lot better if the two halves of SB were wholly separate expansions. One focusing entirely on Doma, Hien and all that and the other on Ala Mhigo.

I get that the expansions continue to build on each other, but it doesn't make certain characters less irritating as fuck or forgive some ho-hum shit that crops up in the storytelling. It's miles above WoW or EQ 'storytelling', but it's pretty on par with Final Fantasy in general (which isn't a knock) and not really anything particularly sublime.

Cybsled said:
I think one thing that stands out is by the time you get to ShB, the Scions feel less like co-workers/quest givers and more like friends. There is a great part in EW where you are up against a time limit and lots of players got anxiety because it’s implied that if you fail to make it, the scions might get murdered. They twist this knife a bit further when a scene comes later when 2 characters that probably love your character the most encounter the threat alone. Without the prior character and emotional development, those types of scenes would be less impactful

The Scions (at least the ones who get the majority of screentime) generally feel like irritating assholes (Thancred, Krile and Alisaie are the only ones that don't really bother me, while Urianger and Tataru are generally minor supporting characters), although I'm slowly starting to change my opinions on them with the end of SB quests. Can we at least agree that Lyse can fuck off forever?

Flinch · Mar 8, 2022

xmod2 said:
You're ignoring that it is an MMO and spent a lot of time just being a bog standard shitty mmo before deciding to pivot into being more of a traditional Final Fantasy title. When Heavensward came out, WoW was mid Warlords of Draenor. If you are playing HS now, you are going back through time to 2015 MMOs (earlier and worse when you play ARR) that have only been moderately revamped to bring it up to today's standards. Compared to the peers at the time, this shit was best in class. The fact that the story gets better and ends up delivering and resolving a lot of the character arcs started in HS (retroactively) is why people consider the game good even though it 'gets good 3 installments in'. Forcing you to go through the time capsule of old mmo design is why it's rough.

People have said time and time again (at least I have) to skip to ARR and even to Shadowbringers if you are starting now. Playing through ARR->HS->SB to get to Shadowbringers is like forcing yourself to sit through season 1 of TNG because you heard it gets good 3 seasons in. Sure, if you are already a fan you will appreciate S1 more, but if it's someone completely new to Star Trek, they're going to hate it. They can watch S1, get 2 episodes into S2 and say Star Trek TNG sucks, and people who like the show will laugh at them, the same way people in this thread are laughing at Sylas.

Yeah, I think I said earlier in the thread that the story is good for MMO-standards. If I hadn't, I apologize.

I find that there are some folks who elevate XIV's overall story as some sort of amazing narrative that blows people's minds. I haven't been 100% following the saga of Sylas in here, but he's said some dumb shit (completely missing certain plot points/details), but also has some valid general criticisms of the story.

Overall, I've enjoyed playing through ARR all the way up to Shadowbringers thus far. There's some stuff that's just completely dragged for me (anything with Lyse, virtually everything with Alphinaud, particularly post ARR/pre HW, and the MSQ questline leading up to Titan that could be condensed quite a bit and still convey the same narrative angle they were aiming for) but it's propped up with a lot of fun stuff, side content and other details/things in the story I do enjoy.

I just don't see it as this amazing story and I do think that some fans oversell it.

Chris · Mar 8, 2022

Flinch said:
But people don't tout Season 1 of TNG as being great.

Nobody has ever said that ARR is good.

Endwalker made me cry and invoked an existential crisis.

The suffering you endure in ARR was written into the Endwalker story when the question of why a benevolent all powerful God would allow suffering to exist is answered.

Cybsled · Mar 8, 2022

Flinch said:
an we at least agree that Lyse can fuck off forever?

Yes. Lyse’s “savior” arc in SB felt unearned and she just came across as a passionate but preachy airhead with the charisma of a rock, so players usually got irritated with her. That is probably why in part in like the very next SB patch, the story gave her a reason to bow out. I think she became less annoying after base Stormblood, but that is in large part due to her just being a background character

Sylas · Mar 8, 2022

xmod2 said:
You're ignoring that it is an MMO and spent a lot of time just being a bog standard shitty mmo before deciding to pivot into being more of a traditional Final Fantasy title. When Heavensward came out, WoW was mid Warlords of Draenor. If you are playing HS now, you are going back through time to 2015 MMOs (earlier and worse when you play ARR) that have only been moderately revamped to bring it up to today's standards.

Yeah I understand that the older content is worse. By no means would I call the older content "standard shitty MMO". It was it's own thing, really leaned in to this MSQ thing, questing is the entirety of the experience. Even dungeons only exist because of quests. Sure it has a few "optional" dungeons and even some optional quests that aren't part of the MSQ but for the most part this game is designed around following the MSQ. There is nothing standard about this design, it's always been about being a Final Fantasy title and always has not been about being an MMO.

xmod2 said:
Compared to the peers at the time, this shit was best in class.

The fuck is this? You mean compared to WoW it was better, as far as having a story goes? Because every other Story based MMO that existed at the time was and still is miles better than this one. See the problem is for you guys, you only ever played maybe EQ, then WoW and you stayed playing WoW for years, then you started FF14. You are comparing a Quest based story game (FF14) against 2 MMOs that use lore as setting, background, but are not at all about telling a story. WoW may have started the road towards story based/theme park style games being about Quests, but at its heart it was still just a world with background lore. Story is just retroactively inserted to piece together dungeons and raids so that they make narrative sense.

xmod2 said:
The fact that the story gets better and ends up delivering and resolving a lot of the character arcs started in HS (retroactively) is why people consider the game good even though it 'gets good 3 installments in'. Forcing you to go through the time capsule of old mmo design is why it's rough.

Again FF14 doesn't have old MMO design. Maybe it used to be standard MMO design and they went back and added in the MSQ later? Doesn't sound right though, I seem to recall the MSQ/FF narrative always being there, it seems like its been slimmed down a bit (but not nearly enough) each expansion, but this has always been a FF/MSQ first and mmo second.

but IDK I only played about 5 hours of FF14 back in 2014, couldn't get over 2.5s GCD, complete lack of abilities, and how homoerotic and effeminate every single player model/animation was, not to mention all the weaboo shit. Your character choices back in 14 was A) Play a Female character, B) play a mixed variety of tranny homosexual or C) Play as Shrek. I noped out hard, but as I initially stated in my very first post in this thread, the field of MMOs right now is so goddamn barren I decided to give this one another shot.

xmod2 said:
People have said time and time again (at least I have) to skip to ARR and even to Shadowbringers if you are starting now. Playing through ARR->HS->SB to get to Shadowbringers is like forcing yourself to sit through season 1 of TNG because you heard it gets good 3 seasons in. Sure, if you are already a fan you will appreciate S1 more, but if it's someone completely new to Star Trek, they're going to hate it. They can watch S1, get 2 episodes into S2 and say Star Trek TNG sucks, and people who like the show will laugh at them, the same way people in this thread are laughing at Sylas.

You have maybe, a few people have suggested using a skip. But for the most part everyone else swore up and down that the initial story was important for background and you needed to suffer through it. Also laughing at me in this thread? Lol

Cybsled said:
Deep Space 9 would like a word with you

Keep in mind ARR->EW is essentially a 10 year story arc. ARR is mostly world building. HW continues on that trend, but tries to narrow the scope of the story for that expansion. SB gets grief because the story is sort of disjointed - The Othgard part is overall much better, and post-SB feels better than the .0 version. SB more importantly introduces some extremely important characters and concepts.

ShB takes all those previous storybeats and connects most of them. You get payoffs for all that ground work, and it even retroactively makes the prior stuff seem better.

EW is basically tying up the final major loose ends that weren’t resolved in ShB. I think overall it was less consistent than ShB, but the highs were very high in the expansion and it delivers some good emotional moments.

I think one thing that stands out is by the time you get to ShB, the Scions feel less like co-workers/quest givers and more like friends. There is a great part in EW where you are up against a time limit and lots of players got anxiety because it’s implied that if you fail to make it, the scions might get murdered. They twist this knife a bit further when a scene comes later when 2 characters that probably love your character the most encounter the threat alone. Without the prior character and emotional development, those types of scenes would be less impactful

Great example, Lots of posts like this in this thread, implying that I need to slog through it all to get these payoffs later.

So by the time I get to ShB the scions should feel like friends? Well i'm in stormblood now, which means, sometime later during the stormblood expansion i'm supposed to magically fall in love with the scion NPCs? They are going to have some deep, emotional character arcs and i'm going to start giving a shit about them? Even though I can't even tell them a fucking part right now? They are all identical robots who can, at most, be described as "Idealistic" and "bratty". They have no personality or soul.

Cybsled · Mar 8, 2022

While you are probably trolling, the answer is yes. I will fully admit that some of the Scions really don’t “click” until ShB. And some start to show much more personality than they did previously

Secrets · Mar 9, 2022

Unironically I hated this game until I paid attention during Shadowbringers and it made me want to rewatch the story from Heavensward onwards.

I feel like I gained an appreciation for this game in Shadowbringers - though it was the perfect storm of WoW being shit, people pointing out that Shadowbringers had a good story, etc.

Stormblood was the worst xpac imo. Just uninspired characters aside from the main antagonist / yandere. Lyse can go fuck herself.

Neranja · Mar 9, 2022

Secrets said:
Stormblood was the worst xpac imo. Just uninspired characters aside from the main antagonist / yandere. Lyse can go fuck herself.

That's the thing, though: SE is really listening to their players, and you can see them course correcting through the SB patch content. Which seems to be contrary to the current trend in western game development.

Cybsled · Mar 9, 2022

Yoshi P did confirm in interviews that they will make story tweaks based on audience reception of story/character elements in prior patches.

Folanlron · Mar 9, 2022

I really don't see the point of tweaking stories that were written 10years ago, the ARR changes are gonna be nice and maybe even the new DF stuff that comes out of it will be better, ... no more Castrum just gotta do Ultimate Weapon..(If the person decides too do it that way, otherwise it's trust..)

I have been seeing alot of players doing Hydaelyn thru DF lately though... and 1 thing I've noticed they've all said they skipped....

joz123 · Mar 9, 2022

Sylas said:
Yeah I understand that the older content is worse. By no means would I call the older content "standard shitty MMO". It was it's own thing, really leaned in to this MSQ thing, questing is the entirety of the experience. Even dungeons only exist because of quests. Sure it has a few "optional" dungeons and even some optional quests that aren't part of the MSQ but for the most part this game is designed around following the MSQ. There is nothing standard about this design, it's always been about being a Final Fantasy title and always has not been about being an MMO.

The fuck is this? You mean compared to WoW it was better, as far as having a story goes? Because every other Story based MMO that existed at the time was and still is miles better than this one. See the problem is for you guys, you only ever played maybe EQ, then WoW and you stayed playing WoW for years, then you started FF14. You are comparing a Quest based story game (FF14) against 2 MMOs that use lore as setting, background, but are not at all about telling a story. WoW may have started the road towards story based/theme park style games being about Quests, but at its heart it was still just a world with background lore. Story is just retroactively inserted to piece together dungeons and raids so that they make narrative sense.

Again FF14 doesn't have old MMO design. Maybe it used to be standard MMO design and they went back and added in the MSQ later? Doesn't sound right though, I seem to recall the MSQ/FF narrative always being there, it seems like its been slimmed down a bit (but not nearly enough) each expansion, but this has always been a FF/MSQ first and mmo second.

but IDK I only played about 5 hours of FF14 back in 2014, couldn't get over 2.5s GCD, complete lack of abilities, and how homoerotic and effeminate every single player model/animation was, not to mention all the weaboo shit. Your character choices back in 14 was A) Play a Female character, B) play a mixed variety of tranny homosexual or C) Play as Shrek. I noped out hard, but as I initially stated in my very first post in this thread, the field of MMOs right now is so goddamn barren I decided to give this one another shot.

You have maybe, a few people have suggested using a skip. But for the most part everyone else swore up and down that the initial story was important for background and you needed to suffer through it. Also laughing at me in this thread? Lol

Great example, Lots of posts like this in this thread, implying that I need to slog through it all to get these payoffs later.

So by the time I get to ShB the scions should feel like friends? Well i'm in stormblood now, which means, sometime later during the stormblood expansion i'm supposed to magically fall in love with the scion NPCs? They are going to have some deep, emotional character arcs and i'm going to start giving a shit about them? Even though I can't even tell them a fucking part right now? They are all identical robots who can, at most, be described as "Idealistic" and "bratty". They have no personality or soul.

Ehrgeix · Mar 9, 2022

I’m pretty sure it was me earlier who said most of the msq is shitty but shb is good. Shb 5.0 (Not patches after) really is good, at least as solid as like ff6/7/8/9 stories. And it does make you care a bit more about the scions — it’s really like they just had a diff writing team on that one expansion (even though I know they didn’t and I struggled to enjoy Endwalker after, maybe Covid just ruined it or something).

I think FF just has so much more going than story and I’m not sure why people emphasise story as a reason to play so much (prob between a quarter and half~ the people I raid with skip it) - savage is really enjoyable and ult is ok. Deep dungeons are great and solo deep dungeons are an unusually challenging experience. Crafting is… probably too easy to be particularly interesting now but it’s kind of a neat system. Eureka was a pretty interesting concept too.

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Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Flinch

Golden Knight of the Realm

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider

Sylas

Flinch

Golden Knight of the Realm

xmod2

Argarth

On the verandah

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider

...

Goonsquad Officer

Flinch

Golden Knight of the Realm

Flinch

Golden Knight of the Realm

Chris

Potato del Grande

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider

Sylas

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider

Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member

Neranja

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider

Folanlron

Trakanon Raider

joz123

Potato del Grande

Ehrgeix

Trakanon Raider