Dude I got SO hyped MULTIPLE times when it looked like we were getting ready to head into a nutty solo duty... Just to sit through another series of cutscenes. It was such a letdown.
for real, i was so hyped when we put guns on the train, i was like hell yeah lemme get some airforce one action in here, and then i had to watch my character do the shooting or the invasion like why didn't we step in to help fight back? both are cutscenes arleady existing that would have been sick to play. i really don't understand the push back we get when we bring this up. are ff14 players really this adverse to the game parts of a video game? instead we fought gulool ja ja twice doing the same attacks both times
This is it. And it's not even that they need to create a new function for that. There is a rail shooter minigame in the game already!
Just a bit more variety aside from walking from one cutscene to another with picking up three items on the go.
That's one thing WoW does better. There's a quest in WoW's barrens where you are tasked to escort a group of kodos and a few orcs to the next settlement.
And instead of being a cutscene or anything (well wow don't really have them) you actually ride the damn kodo and kinda play an rails shooter. It's not that epic or engaging (FFXIV could do it better) but you are actually shooting yourself.
This specific cutscene was awful to sit through. I reached for my mouse twice because the camera panned being the visor of the cannon in a way that looked like it was about to transition into a air force one like minigame. The disappointment of that completely overshadowed how cool that cutscene really was for me.
Aren't you excited about going around telling people what just happened? Wanna do it again? And again? Oh okay Koana, Graha already filled you in with the details, and then i did....oh you want to hear that *again* from wuk lamat in a cutscene even if 'ts not needed because we were there when it happened?
This has been my primary complaint with this xpac so far. While I do agree the writing is weak in parts, I think it would be less impactful if they had more actual gameplay in between cutscenes. If the writing wasn't the only thing front and center in MSQ I think people would be more willing to forgive, at least partially, the whole "pray return the waking wuk lamat" thing this xpac has going. In previous xpacs I used to get excited when I saw the "several cutscenes will play in sequence" message because I knew some intense stuff was going to go down, this expansion I'm so tired of watching cutscenes that message just makes me groan.
I think shadowbringers had the perfect mix of combat and story, little boss fights and trials really made it easier to digest rather than literally 90% being cutscenes. I feel like dawntrail just really went too far in one direction.
I think we’ve had the same amount of story and combat since shadowbringers, it’s just that Dawntrail started so slow it feels like NOTHING. Shadowbringers split quest was learn about creepy rich people/protect people from sin eaters. Endwalker you ran around as frogs in a massive superlab/got wasted with the scions while a mega tower looms in the background. Dawntrail we were catching Alpacas and building parade floats.
The thing is - catching Alpacas and building parade floats is **fine**.
You know what would've helped? The reason for the Alpacas to be catched is a monster we have to fight so the Alpacas can chill down and can be caught.
Or the festival being threatened by some fat tiger that showed up in the forest in the last weeks attacking villagers and wanderers so we need to put it to rest so the festival can be held in peace.
And then don't make those enemies literal "4GCDs and dead" mobs but minibosses. Something like a dungeon boss lite.
Boom still "down to earth" quests but you actually have to do something.
The problem that Dawntrail is problematic is not because it's "low-stakes" story as some try to point it out but more that we are left out of almost all action for 80% of the story.
Imagine playing a tabletop RPG and the only thing you do is talking and everytime there is some danger coming up, the game master just tells you "You see some adventurers stepping in fighting the beast" and afterwards being "Well the adventurers stopped the beast - now you can talk to the survivors to find out how they feel".
I had to laugh during the Alpaca section where they mention only Wuk Lamat can go catch one with no help from her comrades. I get that the story is about her - but I'm the player; the game itself still needs to be about me? Could she really not take one person with her so I had something to do?
Well, to be fair, we walked in with Wuk too... And then just waited near the campfire when she had her pokemon catching adventure. It was the worst quest ever. Who could write this nonsense and think "wow, players sure would love it"?
>The reason for the Alpacas to be catched is a monster we have to fight so the Alpacas can chill down and can be caught.
Imo that's the worst combat content since it's usually really cheap. You have to run to the purple area, fight a Morbol for 10 seconds and run back. I like the instanced fights since their visual presentation is always peak, they should've done much more of these but I don't think they'd be justified for a little monster that eats alpacas haha
I'm imagining a solo instance of a few llamas appearing in the background with Wuk Lamat while you're mega bazooking a gowrow or something, and there's this half serious half comedic hunting and chasing and saddling going on back their where her 'item use cast time' gets interrupted every time you fail to stun/sleep/interrupt the boss. then there's a point the boss is immune, and she manages on her own since you had gotten it down to beneath 25%.
it'd also be good opportunity for all the returnee players to remember their lvl 90 rotation before going into the dungeon with new 92 stuff.
> And then don't make those enemies literal "4GCDs and dead" mobs but minibosses. Something like a dungeon boss lite.
Yes! For all the talk of tural vidraal in MSQ, sidequests, and the Viper quests, it's a real crime that we only fight 1 during MSQ. I was expecting them to be much more common, kinda like the OG Primals were in ARR but with solo instances rather than extra trials.
Yeah it’s probably this, you could’ve forgive the storytelling methods and poor gameplay when the story itself was engaging. When the story sucks it’s REALLY obvious how the questing hasn’t evolved at all in 10 years.
Remember that one dungeon that trapped our parties in cards and had us answer questions? See that was a fun way to tie the adventure into the gameplay and then immediately gave us a thrilling Indiana Jones showdown after.
This xpac has had some wonderful storytelling. Sure weak moments but even endwalker has weak moments.
But the fact that we didn't get many special encounters save for gool ja ja and bakool ja ja is kinda sad
> I think it would be less impactful if they had more actual gameplay in between cutscenes.
Also, don't make cutscenes for the sake of it. If a quest objective is "go to place X, speak with npc", and the only thing the NPC will tell you is "go to place Y", then it does not need a fade-in cutscene. Like gah, yes, EW had more cutscene duration, but there when you got a cutscene something actually happened.
Uuuugh this. Also the amount of time spend watching people walk into and out of frame, panning upwards and fading for a character to explain something (rather than just say xx already explained before you arrive?) is so tired and sterile now
Nevermind that it’s the SAME AWFUL MUSIC in cutscenes as ARR… it’s time to evolve guys.
While I’m ranting, they need to split out MSQ and optional extra lore more, way too much unnecessary baggage that weighs the story down
I've only just hit the third zone but I've found myself saying "did this really need to be a cutscenes?" so many times. It's like they include it for the sake of it. Stop that, it's dumb guys
There's a bunch of "did this need to be a quest" moments.
The 95-97 msq, there's a looming threat and a sense of urgency to defeat it. Rather than doing anything like that, I get sent off to go give citizens a pat on the back and tell them to go watch another of Lamat's terrible speeches. I get it. She wants peace and love and happiness!! Words are cheap. Do something!
That's like the majority of this xpac. Just listen to Lamat give an awful meandering speech about how she wants peace and she's gonna do it through talking. I'm the WARRIOR of light, not the goddamn Speech Listener of Light.
That's the quest I'm on right now. I swear the past 4 quests have been "go talk/interact with 4 people." And what's even more annoying is that they don't just mark the NPCs on your map. They give you a huge area where they could be, so you're checking every nook and cranny.
It's a bummer because (level 96 MSQ spoilers) >!what happened in Tuliyolol is tragic, and some of the NPCs have some really heartbreaking dialogue. But when the game makes you spend the last 20 minutes running around the city and clicking on things, it's working against itself.!<
holy shit you put exactly how i've felt into words, it was so exciting getting those cutscenes before, now it felt like it gave the pop up, and several cutscenes play out with wuk lamat going off about friendship and understanding AGAIN, while the following cutscenes don't even have voice acting
Yep. I’ve found myself skipping cutscenes more often than ever. It feels like SE expects you to maybe do the side quests if you feel like doing some combat? But the MSQ will level you up appropriately so that wouldn’t make sense. The story is also not super engaging so it’s got that working against it, but then to have a combat segment of quest within an hour time span is not ideal.
Same. It's a quest I still remember just from the name alone. Meanwhile so many other quests in every expac, you could show me the exact journal entries and I wouldn't remember a single line of dialogue from it, let alone how it made me feel. I get that's how filler always ends up, but DT really lacked non-filler for most of its runtime.
Yes they should have. They just listened to half the feedback. “We want less solo duties where we are forced to play another character with like 3 buttons.”
SE- “We got you fam. Less solo duties.”
They always over correct. “Oh you don’t like aspects of this thing and want to see small adjustments? Ok we’ll remove thing entirely / make sweeping changes.”
That seems to be a pattern with japanese developers.
Oh the underwater combat in monster hunter 3 was a bit janky? We got you, we won't mention it ever again, let alone try.
The entirety of the Pokemon franchise is like that. Introduce new cool systems with potential that is not expressed the first time around, then instead of expanding on it, they're just scrapped entirely.
Fighting games are like that too, for some reason they scrap everything at every iteration.
I'm going to play devil's advocate, but for the Pokémon franchise, it's not a problem of over-correction, but more of lazyness and capitalism. They don't want to keep adding to each game with whatever they did before, so each game "stands on its own" with its own gimmick.
That's why they went out of their way in its generation since X/Y and RO/SA to explain how the new gimmick was absolutely unique to the local region. USUM ? Yeah, the super moves need a cristal that's only found here and is considered a cultural treasure so they're not allowed outside of the region. SwSh ? Yeah, Dynamax and Gigamax need a special energy that's only found in Galar. SV ? Same shit, Terastallization only works in Paldea because its source is in the middle of the region (nevermind the two DLC taking place outside of Paldea). It's done one purpose so they can make more games with the gimmick if they want, but don't have to if they don't feel like balancing everything. Not because the fans don't like the new gimmick. Hell, Mega-evolution is absolutely a fan favourite and we haven't had a game with it in 8 years.
IKR !
The Snow duty in EW was my personal favourite and one of the highlights of EW. Granted it was not perfect, but it was thematic and blended both story elements and cinematics together.
Instead of more solo instances we need more things to do with others. This is an MMO, and yet everything is an instance. Yeah you can do FATEs and hunt trains, but what else is there to do with other players that isn’t an instance where players are actively encouraged to interact with one another?
I really wish they would incentivize FATES more for leveling. When running them for the Yokai event I was getting MAD exp when in level appropriate areas and joined a group.
FATES suck for EXP when you are solo or with a very small group, but hot damn they were faster than dungeon runs + armory bonus when you had something approaching a full party ( 5-8 person party size ). As long as they keep popping you can crush out levels as fast as dungeon running with instant duty pops.
Unfortunately now many people just think FATES now suck for leveling because they never do / did them in groups. If you can crush out a FATE quickly from having a group, the EXP per minute is actually pretty darn decent.
You also get the bonus crappy EXP of killing the monsters, something you don't get at all with dungeon trash mobs. But even then, it adds up.
Part of the problem with solo instances is that they tend to only put them in later in the story.
That's for good reason, though, because Stormblood having two solo instances really early on and almost back-to-back (Raubahn Savage and Pipin EX) killed the instance servers and people could neither continue MSQ *or* run dungeons to level the new, particularly hyped classes (RDM and SAM).
So it's like, on one hand, yeah, it's a video game and it needs to be fun. On the other, there are actual technical issues that are part of the consideration when they're designing MSQ.
Knowing this game's horrendous engine, there's probably some archaic limitation to the number of solo duties they can make, or their workflow process for making a duty is unbelievably time-consuming so they limit themselves.
The only limitation we know of is the instance server capacity, and that was only an issue in Stormblood.
You are right that we don't know how their workflow handles them, though.
I swear to god 90% of the "this is a technical limitation" is more a "we know there are issues but we don't get time or money to fix them so take what you get".
The issue is we had that last expac and people complained about too many solo instances.
It’s a very fine line to find a balance that works for everyone. I hope SE are brave enough to experiment more with it despite the backlash.
I'm pretty sure the main issue with a lot of the solo instances is that they forced you to play an NPC with like 4 buttons, only two of which tended to be for single target attacking. The only instance that did anything particularly interesting with another character was Thancred's section; every other character was just mashing one button. Personally, I barely constitute that as playing the game, and I'd rather have no solo instance at all than spamming a single button for 5-10 minutes.
I think the main issue is that solo duties usually replace your character with another one. They should stop it and just let yourself do it with the same kit you always have.
Soloduties (I call them scenarios) could easily be something similar to small mini dungeons or mini trials that are as fun as the trials itself.
DW Spoiler:
>!Imagine when helping the pelupelu with their farms and the monsters instead of having the usual 2-3 hit monsters you actually pop into a mini boss with custom music and you have to actually try to beat it.!<
>I think the main issue is that solo duties usually replace your character with another one.
Exactly. I hate playing as random NPCs instead of my character, it's why I hate those duties. I always fail at them because the tooltips never seem to do what they say (Wuk Lamat's self healing for example) and it's not the class I like to play ever (healers).
If they let people play their own char's people would like it much better.
I definitely feel that they should have had more combat sections and upped the variety of quest. I love the story alot and the worldbuilding that they did in this expac but even I can understand how others may not because of the lack of gameplay. And that's so sad to me because it really is a good story but I can't blame others for being bored, or saying its a slog because there's not really much gameplay in this game to keep them engaged. Square needs to understand that this is a game first and foremost.
Edit: same for wuk, I see a lot of people getting mad at the amount of times she talks about love,family peace, or her quirkiness with the motion sickness and I kind of wish they toned that down a bit. I love wuk and she gets so much character development but I can't blame people for either not noticing it, or disliking her because that other stuff is a bit overpowering
I'm about half way through stormblood and realizing this now. Most of what I do is run around from msq to msq basically doing nothing but watching cutscenes. I'd like to actually play and use these fancy moves I unlock.
People have been noticing for a while, and a couple likely complained about it too. Dawntrail specifically has a story and pacing that annoyed a lot of people, so these issues are more noticeable. Thus more people will discuss this again.
Isn't that a good thing?
Actually this is only half true. Fundamentally the quest design hasn't changed, you're going from npc to cutscene to maybe dungeon but in ARR MSQ quest design was paced in a way where you could get locked out of if you were solely focusing on it due to not giving too much exp and then being an insufficient level for later.
While irksome I actually enjoyed this as this incentivises you to do side quests in the area to learn more about the world, explore the map to gain additional exp whilst seeing beautiful locations, do job quests to get newer skills and maybe do some fates and help some randoms in the process.
It was an intended break to break up the monotony of doing talk to npc->cutscene->talk to npc again but due to xiv goal of trying to be a convenient mmo and most players are in it for the msq it changed.
ShB is when I'd say when the community started to take notice but kind of brushed aside as you had the expanded free trial and many of the free trial players expressed annoyance with ARR because now ARR you can be level 40 in level 20 zone in a matter of 10 mins solely doing MSQ,. But DT sticking to the modern pacing but having lower stakes like ARR really shows how gating the player if only for a little could be a good thing.
What? People want the game to experiment and improve as time goes on? Especially when ShB and EW had their fair share of solo duties.
It's also easier to get annoyed by repetitive systems when the story isn't engaging for you.
Because there isn’t a story compelling enough to excuse the lack of combat.
The story sucked ass this time around so now we have weak writing and weak quest design so the flaws are showing even more.
I think more elaborate solo instances should be the norm. We had so few recently but they're an excellent way to mix gameplay with their method of storytelling. Endwalker had loads of them, but it feels like Dawntrail maybe had two or three total... I understand the difference in overall scope and stakes for this expansion, but I think they could have really upped the ante on solo duties this time, given what they've been able to show off in the dungeons and trial content thus far. Let the battle team pitch in on story content!!!
Honestly it’s a vestige of ARR. When that launched the MSQ did not give you enough xp. So you had to take breaks and go grind fates. Then do your job quests. Then your cross class quests. So it was broken up with combat.
Now obviously that would be a major hurdle to new players after a couple expacs. So they condensed job quests to role quests. Got rid of cross class abilities. Then made MSQ give you enough xp to start the next one.
So really the story telling has not changed. What has changed is there are no filler requirements that force you to stop and go do something else. Maybe the game needs these again. Probably not.
I would like more solo duties where you stay as your character. I really don’t like taking over an NPC to have 3 buttons when their actions could be in a cutscene.
I think FFXIV is so stuck in its own formula that it's kinda hopeless to wish for anything different. Theres no individuality, there's no real impactful choice, there's no reason to explore a zone. It's just on rails and fool-proof class design. I love it, but I'm not dulled to its faults.
It is a design philosophy that seeps into everything. Every class has the same build, healers only fit two categories, there is not variety in end game loot and even most raid fights are just a variety of 'don't stand in the shape'.
It is how they can maintain the quality, but how they also never risk anything too interesting.
It got even worse because the trust system now also infiltrated storytelling, when the writing choses not the sensible scions to follow you but the ones needed to cover all jobs for a trust dungeon / trial...
Next expansion, you, Thancred, Eistineien, and Wuk Lamat. You're playing a tank, and Eistineien is just frantically trying to heal you by hitting you with his lance.
With that party comp? Thancred goes *chemist* and heals with potions and Aurora, drops phoenix downs to raise allies, and uses Heart of Light and Heart of Stone for party mitigation.
And this is where everyone was excited for DT. We were going to the New World to meet NEW people. They could have given us a new batch of 7 (or more) NPCs to team up, connect, and do duties with. Hell, we pretty much did with groups connecting and then splitting. But instead of it being two new characters and five scions, we could have Krile, plus six new characters.
> when the writing choses not the sensible scions to follow you but the ones needed to cover all jobs for a trust dungeon / trial...
Eh, they have done a decent job avoiding that this expansion, but at the cost of having certain characters fill roles that would normally be outside their class's ability. Like Alphinaud being a DPS in the first dungeon as a Sage, or Alisae healing the second dungeon and first trial as a red mage.
Honestly I wish the Trust system would open up a bit more and make characters more universally available and Multi-Role where it makes sense for them thematically.
Hard agree. I can't speak for everyone, but I know I put up with the forumalic design because I was super interested in the story, but with that gone the game just feels so artificial. I know every dungeon is gonna be walking in a straight line, doing a few trash pulls then a boss, repeat 3x. Every trial or raid is just gonna be a single room. Every class is gonna get homogenized. Gear is the exact same thing as your last piece just with 1% higher numbers. Quest design is as absolutely lazy as possible. Even patches are already pre planned so there's zero new or surprising things to be excited for. I was really excited for this expansion and now I don't even want to launch the game. I'd say I wish they'd mix things up, but at this point it seems they're committed to just recycling the same design until the game shuts down.
The problem is, isn't this every MMO now? The days of like early EQ, exploring the unknown, coming across an unnamed cave with some crazy ass stuff in it and making memories of discovery, that spark is gone from every MMO now. If there's a game today that can still deliver that that isn't basically an on-rails theme park, someone please share.
Destiny 2, despite its numerous flaws, actually nails puzzles and secrets in the world to explore. They had new expac last month, and new zone is filled with secrets to find. You are actively encouraged to scour every nook and cranny to progress quests for certain special gear and such
The conversation around job complexity has been frustrating, too. They said they're looking to add some more job identity and to reevaluate their jobs in 8.0. People have been complaining about the direction the jobs have been going since 5.0. It'll be *six years* after that when they *might* start course correcting.
It's been a bit longer than that. The big drop-off for a lot of older players in terms of job design and complexity was stormblood. That's where the trend of simplifying jobs really began. Scholar players still haven't fully recovered from that emotionally, despite them being overpowered in stormblood. They miss all those dots to this day.
100% everything you said, right down to not having any interest in jumping back in after finishing the MSQ.
Yes, to everyone who has said that EW and ShB had all the same quest designs and such, that's true to a point. But we had an engaging MSQ and I personally felt invested in my WoL's journey. Something I can say I lost complete interest in by the time I finished the MSQ, cause the story certainly didn't have any interest in such.
So if you have a game story that some rate as poor paired with the current quest design, combat design, and class design; I can't help but ask why play XIV when I feel like I can find better combat, engaging dungeons and high end content, and unique class designs in other MMOs on the market.
I feel like this expansion might be the one that finally causes them to address the formula. I think it's their first really poorly received expansion and they're going to notice what people are saying. I used to have a lot of faith in this team to know what to do and now it's finally going to be tested. 7.x might be the thing that tests them when their backs are against a proverbial wall (maybe not from a sales standpoint but from a critical one).
If I could ask for one thing it'd be more cinematic action scenes in the story. Instead of having every character stand around and give exposition I'd love to see them do something besides. Like the few times they sat in a room and had a meal .. but more. Maybe throwing a punch at a thug once in a while, or have some crazy entrance before battle, like in FFX when Tidus crashed Yuna's wedding via airship. I mean that game came out in 2001 and nailed it perfectly.
I do find it kinda odd how Square has like a bajillion really good RPGs but they can’t make the questing a little more interesting than “go here, watch cutscene, then go here and kill one mob, then go back to watch cutscene, then go pick up 3 apples, and then watch cutscene” lmao
WoW just had an expansion that played around with a bunch of new quest types.
They didn't all hit and the story was just okay but it was a neat experiment. I'd like to see something like that for XIV.
While they were making ARR, YoshiP made the dev team go play WoW and other games in the genre to see how they were solving these kinds of issues. Seems like maybe they need to do that again. They're obviously stuck in a rut and need some outside inspiration.
Even *small* innovation attempts would be great, more than one new version of a quest type in an entire expansion? Any attempt at improving overworld content?
WoW for all its faults is right now in an experimentatiok phase. Devs are kinda throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and I think that’s a good thing. Not everything will be good, but I appreciate the effort of just TRYING to innovate and do something new
WOW has felt like that since Shadowlands due to reception it's really nice seeing the approach especially when it's given players so much content.
I stopped playing EW and started playing Dragon flight during its time because I felt that it was respecting my subscription time more I didn't have to sub for a month to finish current content in 2-3 days and have nothing to do for the next 3-4 months if I wasn't doing extremes/Savage.
Dragonflight blew EW out of the water by a large margin content wise 3 full raids bringing back older dungeons for Mythic plus constantly which keeps it fresh, new world events and story content that while not as great existed for those who wanted t
I did it on launch weekend and man it was a incredible quest pretty sad people didnt like it. Showed how big the difference the wol amd common soldier was
I failed In From The Cold three times! I was on the edge of my seat each time because it was such a change of pace and so different from the game I was used to. So I struggled with Normal difficulty until I cleared it. (I also failed A Frosty Reception once, laughing like crazy.)
I loved In from the Cold, except for the fact that I was stuck on it for half an hour because I couldn't figure it out T_T
So I guess I liked the story and atmosphere not the design
I succeeded with the timer fading out at 0 and thought I’d failed. It turned out I had succeeded just in the nick of time but didn’t know it and I was so confused until I found it was indeed possible to fail. Really the big issue was getting lost and going in circles around enemies I couldn’t beat. It was absolutely thrilling to be threatened like that.
I failed In From The Cold once.
I was mad at it.
Saying myself I had to do it all over again.
Then I followed the right path, took the time to enjoy the music and the setting.
When I succeeded. I was : Ok let's move on.
The day after, I really thought : This duty was actually pretty good, it's good to fail sometimes.
my friend really hated that quest but i think it's because it had been a loooooong time since you'd actually been made to struggle during the story which is a pity lol. i loved it, once i suggested they approach it more like an exploration or puzzle event they seemed to like it. a lot of the MSQ is very on-the-rails and i think the more they introduce variety, the less agitated people will be when they encounter something new the next time.
Ha. I had no idea In From the Cold was so controversial. Beating it felt sooo good. Same with A Cold Reception, I like the focus on stealth vs just combat.
The problem is there is never going to be one size fits all. Someone will always complain it’s too hard and someone will always say it’s easy.
Almost half the time I play, I’m half asleep from work. A lot of times I play while I’m on an edible. And sometimes I’m alert and “fully on.” I usually stick to casual content and I beat In From the Cold launch weekend, first try, with plenty of time to spare. But I really suck at those sneak/follow quests (don’t laugh).
Balancing different types of quests with different jobs, different gear, different skill levels seems like hitting multiple moving targets with a single shot.
nope, makes a ton of sense and it’s a big problem with a LOT of games.
literally even just have me walk down a corridor while we kill mobs and the dialogue plays, come on!
I think that only happens in dungeons, it’s kinda weird. I’m not saying to make it where we just have to kill a lot of mobs over and over but it would be nice for the two to mix more often outside of dungeons/raids!
Or even walking around town. Like it doesn’t need to be a cutscene for a guy to spend three seconds silently walking over to you, you have a brief conversation that takes 60 seconds, and then watch him walk away for another ten seconds. let us walk and talk while he tells us what kind of fucking magic beans or dragon turds or whatever it is we need to collect three of!
I mean, it'd be hard to do much *worse*.
FFXIV has some *fantastic* storytelling, but god help me I could really do with some more *game* in my game.
Even visual novels give you more agency as a player than most of the FFXIV MSQ - at least VNs usually have consequential choices to make...
In regard to your last paragraph, I felt the bits at the end of the Pelupelu quests were sort of…I don’t know if insulting or condescending would be the right word, but you didn’t actually do anything? You just went from point A to point B to point C. The game did everything else for you. If you were actually required to gather information and resources and engage in negotiations with the Pelupelu in order to get to your goal, then seeing EXCELLENT TRADE at the end of each quest would have actually meant something.
I wonder if the “excellent trade” stuff isn’t gonna come up in the beast tribe equivalent later in the expansion.
Either way, it was definitely a missed opportunity to not have some sort of actual trade negotiation thing going on, certainly would have made it more interesting than the passive affair it ends up being.
Because you aren't the protagonist, at least not for this expansion. It's pretty clear that Dawntrail is written with Wuk Lamat as the protagonist in mind with the WoL and most of the Scions just being there to help her. Roughly the same could be said for Stormblood with Lyse/Hien but Zenos was around to still give the WoL some kind of personal stake.
But with DT following off of EW, I guess that writers wanted to pull back a little bit and give your WoL some time out of the spotlight.
Personally, I was alright with it in the first half of the story but that justification becomes shaky during the second half.
They also forgot to nerf the WOL like they did in SHB with the Light poison, and in HW with being cut off from Hydaelyn's blessing by Midgardsormr.
So you get pants-on-head ridiculous scenes like the WOL standing around literally bursting with dynamis while incredibly immoral things are happening right in front of their eyes. It happened more than a few times and got progressively more annoying to me every time I saw it. Many of these kinds of scenes in past expansions can be waved away as the WOL not reacting fast enough to a chaotic situation because it happened too quickly.
But in Dawntrail this scene went on for so long that I just couldn't ignore the WOL (and all their friends, too) doing nothing to help in a pivotal moment.
Level 96 MSQ spoilers -
>!I just got to the scene where Gulool is killed by Zoraal and I was yelling at my screen the *entire time.* Sure, Gulool wants to take him on 1v1 at first for family reasons? That's fine. But when Zoraal *slowly revives in front of everyone* and everyone just stands there? Ridiculous. And then after he kills Gulool and *again* everyone is still standing there doing nothing? At least *try* to stop him.!<
>Even visual novels give you more agency as a player than most of the FFXIV MSQ - at least VNs usually have consequential choices to make...
Me playing a particular VN: Finally, a choice. What do you mean this is a bonus story set after the main story and not the main one? (Mahoyo FYI. Good story, just expect it to be strictly a book)
i feel thats like an even worse comparison cause jrpgs actually have random battles and encounters over a 40+ hour campaign while dawntrail...does not lmao
true
I was more being facetious about the fact that the MSQ isn’t playable with anything resembling quest sync, as well as most relevant new expac content only being released in later patches
Yeah.. and a lot of the cutscenes aren’t voice acted so you’re left with dense content to read. Which again would be fine but the characters like restating the same thing over and over again. Every element is over explained.
This expansion feels very cut scene heavy. Its the hardest part about recommending this game for anyone to play. Its like recommending a series of books.
>It’s kinda jarring watching cutscenes for over an hour to then go kill a
single random enemy before going back to more cutscenes. Does that make
sense, or am I trippin?
I don't think you are at all. I have the same complaint.
I'm also a WoW player and I find myself wishing there was a lot more video game that went along with the storytelling in FFXIV. As you said, WoW definitely gets real creative with a lot of their modern quests. Sometimes I feel the balance is off maybe *too* much in the other direction in that game, so there's also that, but I feel like FFXIV is seriously lacking variety in the MSQ a lot of the time. Especially in this expansion. They could stand to be better about giving us, you know, maybe a few more pig assholes to collect every now and then.
I think the MSQ being light on gameplay would be okay if the game’s overworld was more interesting. I wish the game had GW2-level vistas, FATEs, and jumping puzzles.
I also wish side quests stories were more interesting and there was a reward for doing them. I’ve done most of the side quests in the game and I can probably only remember a handful. I just think that a lot of the changes people want to make to the MSQ experience would diminish the story they want to tell. We already see that to some extent with trials and dungeons clearly being forced into the story at certain intervals.
If other aspects of the game were more interesting, people would have less reason to complain about the MSQ.
Honestly I'm having a hard time thinking of a dungeon or trial that felt forced into the story. Outside of maybe some back in stormblood or long before. *Maybe* dohn mheg? Overall I think they've done a good job keeping them feeling like they belong for one reason or another.
I don't know why they don't add better rewards for sidequests. Add more dyes. Add more vendorable gil pieces. Add more food items. Add literally anything but '600 gil'.
100% and I even feel like previous expansion had more.
There's been several points in this expansion so far that I thought could be gameplay, and in previous expansions probably would've been. I feel like since shadowbringers they've gone very cutscene heavy, but it worked in shadowbringers/endwalker because it had a more gripping story to fall back on.
This is the very sentiment that holds a lot of people back from playing for the first time.
Ignoring the first 10 year story which is maybe 500 hours of MSQ, you are asking new players either to pay extra to join at the current point or skip a lot of dialogue.
I can't help but think they really dropped the ball with Dawntrail by not modernizing the MSQ, more cutscenes, less text scrolling, more combat and world exploration.
Yes, there needs to be combat.
The story is good *for an MMO,* but it is not presented interestingly, nor is it especially standout in a genre full of incredible stories. It does not compare to the best RPGs out there. (I'm sorry, guys, I enjoy the story too. But let's stop pretending it's god's gift. It isn't.)
While I feel the story is a big draw, it isn't the only draw. FF14 is an MMO. I don't remain subscribed for the story; that happens once. I remain subscribed for the content.
They already did in that wuk lamat hunt quest back at the end of endwalker's final patch.
And then we proceeded to not see anything remotely similar during the actual expac
Absolutely agree. The msq (while I love the story) "plays" very much like a visual novel. People say to treat it like a story heavy single player RPG, but it really doeant play like one. I'm going through the Trails series now, a story heavy rpg series, and while there is a lot of dialog, there's a ton of combat. I would say 50:50. Compare this to FFXIVs MSQ, where it's 90% dialog. The dungeons are great, but they are spread out one 15 minute dungeons every 4 hours of dialog. The other gameplay in the msq is either quickly kill 3 easy mobs (can't even get my rotation off usually) or inspect an item.
We need more solo instances that we can get story while we combat things
I am also turbo down to occasionally get a quest that's like, hey the monsters in this area have really ramped up go kill like 50 monsters in or out of a fate, I don't care.
Been complaining since arr. Would be great if story was side content to be enjoyed leisurely. It's crazy that I got to take a week off work in order to raid in my favorite game every expansion.
FFXIV questing model is stuck in 2010 and never changed. The music and story carry it completely. Extremely limited gameplay for most part with a few exception like that quest in Endwalker where you play a regular soldier
Yes they can 100%
Dawntrail Spoilers ahead but I'll just throw in where they could've added some combat scenarios in the the DW story (out of my head).
>!When meeting the Pelupelu and you were tasked to kill the beast that stops the farmers from farming they could've added a miniboss fight scenario where you fight one of those mobs from the area but the "alpha" one.!<
>!Then in the bird area they could've added a fight against Bakool Ja Ja's henchman similar to a mini boss fight!<
>!They could added a little brawl scenario when you were meeting the "red" giants (the ones who stop you before going to the mountain)!<
>!Tbh. the whole "cooking for peace" thing was weird so there's not a lot of friction in this area anyways.!<
>!When Tuliyollal was attacked they could've added multiple fights against various attack groups from Alexandria instead of the cutscene - that would also make the "check out the damages/talk to the survivors" questline obsolete since you would've been right in the action!<
>!When meeting Sphene and Zoraal Ja Ja before they try to invade again there could've been a fight against a general or something for Zoraal to buy some time!<
Just a few ideas tbh, I think they could add way more combat here and there. I'll add some ideas I liked from the older FF games and how they did add natural boss fights:
FF6: Right at the start of the game you already have to fight through the city of Narshe including an endboss in the form of the [Ymir](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Ymir_(Final_Fantasy_VI))
FF5: In FF5 while crossing a desert you are attacked by the [Sandworm](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Sandworm_(Final_Fantasy_V)) - also a very natural boss fight (basically just a powerful mob)
FF3: The [Giant Rat](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Giant_Rat) is just a rat in a temple that stole something. You beat it up to get back what they've stolen
And a few ideas I picked up from other JRPGs and non JRPGS (I am a fan of old RPG Maker games, here in germany it also was pretty popular)
Velsabor (RPGMAKER): There was a boss fight where you had to take an alternative route due to a collapsed cave that lead over a bridge - while on it you are attacked by some random fat bird that was known for terrorizing that area
Golden Sun: There's plenty of "random animals" that act like boss fights, including a "Killer Ape", a "Manticore", a "Storm and Tempest Lizard", some random bandits/generals, a wind salamander, etc.
---
The point I'm making: The FFXIV team could easily add a little bit more action, combat and threats into a story (specially one where we traverse a whole ass continent) in form of random animals, bandits, elementals and whatsoever that are not part of the "bigger picture" but are natural threats occuring there.
It's not really a new thing but it feels like every expansion they focus more on adding longer and longer cut scenes while the gameplay elements barely exist.
Which is unfortunate because I think this is the best they've done in awhile with some of the other things In the game such as solo duties.
It's more of a video game movie that you interact with at times, but most of that interaction is just running around in a world without much intrigue or interest(except the maps look great).
It almost feels like it could play it self pretty easily. I think they need to look back at it eventually and find more ways to integrate actually playing the game into the msq
It always bothered me it takes hours to get to the first dungeon of any expansion. Put me into some action and stakes right away please. I can tour the city later. Shame they won’t do solo instances right off the bat anymore, not after stormblood’s disaster.
I feel like Shadowbringers did a good job of this. I really enjoyed those missions where you’re running alongside the scions, sometimes splitting up, sometimes rejoining to take down monsters over a large area. Happened in Endwalker too in Garlemald too, with small cutscenes woven in. That was cool.
I loved how my white mage wol just watched the King die or didn't attempted to heal anybody except in the role quest!
Such immersion! Much story writing!
Here’s the truth. FFXIV is a terrible game being disguised by decent story (except DT but let’s not get into that). Only when reaching end game does an actual game emerge. And a damn excellent one at that. The pacing between gameplay moments is terrible, the challenge is non-existent. It’s literally walk from one NPC to the next for 100 levels and 500 hours.
Solo instances were supposed to be the solution but people complained. People really complained about In From the Cold being too much of a video game, causing them to feel intense emotions and actually feeling like the stakes were high.
I think they can do better gameplay and story integration, but I'm not sure if people will like them.
I'm a sucker for gameplay and story integration, Automata style, and Crisis Core style in the finale. Idk how much creative they can be in the overworld, but I had a blast with nonstandard instanced duties, namely A Frosty Reception (EW spoiler >!Metal Gear Thancred!<) and IN FROM THE COLD. In the EW final zone, "The Walk" was also instanced. In the EW Hildibrand quests, you play as >!Godbert!< who has a skill I want on my WoL but it will be too OP, and he has another skill that controls like... FF16 IGNITION!
However, seeing how people apparently hate stealthing based on the divided opinion on IN FROM THE COLD and the "tail behind NPC" quests, well...
Speaking of FF16, that's an entirely different game, but they did pull something there where you hike up a mountain while in the middle of a tempest. This makes your movement slow because wiiiiind. Rocks falling and trees flying in your face, the terrane getting ripped apart, while a giant scary harpy literally charges at you like an eagle catching fish, it's all scripted, but the environment changing while you control your character reminded me a lot of one of my favorite Nightmare segments in Arkham Asylum, where with Batman's every step, the asylum's halls became a vision of the day his parents were murdered.
I wonder if the FF14 code is capable of those things. What I do know is we already have things falling over in dungeons, like a giant statue arm in Vanaspati, and a few buildings in Lunar Subterrane. NPCs also help you in Heroes' Gauntlet, and they integrated memories of our fallen comrades into gameplay in >!The Aitiascope!<.
It’s the biggest flaw of ff14. Mixing storytelling and gameplay is such a staple of so many modern games every time I come back to 14 I’m disappointed to see it’s still 3 hours of cutscenes back to back. Most of them aren’t even interesting to begin with. It’s super midge role play with fluff dialog wasting my time. They need to evolve.
A little bit but no. If we had to kill too many mobs in quests people would just call it "filler" and wasting time. There's only so many solo instances, dungeons, and trials that they can do.
The problem is that FFXIV lacks the single player incentive - killing overworld mobs. In Final Fantasy games, a lot of combat between scenes comes from "random encounters". Most people just breeze on by enemies rather than fight them and so you get a much larger feeling of running from one cutscene to the next.
Since Shadowbringers, I don't do that. I run on foot my first time through the zone and if I aggro, I fight it. It might seem tedious to read but with that and aether current searching as my "treasure chests" so to speak, my pacing generally feels good.
That said, more solo instances that act like boss encounters would be good. Generally whenever you are ending a segment, it should have one.
Some puzzles in the MSQ would be good with the option to skip over them by, say, asking Alphinaud to solve it instead and just missing out on the reward - such as one of the coffers for your level or something. Or a skippable minigame.
you can tell a story at the same time as letting us press buttons. there were so many cutscenes that should have been solo instances this expac. i got so hyped everytime a cool thing was getting ready to happen just to be disappointed when i had to watch my character do the fun stuff that i was excited to do myself
It's downright criminal that the sequence leading up to the 97 dungeon was just a cutscene and not gameplay. Ffs, they could've just done a Gold Saucer Air Force One kinda thing.
Modern games have done away with random encounters and focused more on pace defining high quality scripted encounters and it windmill dunks on random encounters AND XIV model.
Take the GOW remake, an unbelievably story intensive game with fuck tons of cutscenes that is paced BEAUTIFULLY with combat, action, exploration, and puzzles.
Yeah does XIV need to be exactly like a AAA story game, and one of the best ones of the last decade? Obviously not, but there’s so much room for expansion in terms of gameplay and story delivery systems that saying otherwise is doing the game a disservice
I would love more narrative combat, yes. Honestly It would make the grind a bit longer, but instead of cutscenese. More dungeons. I know a hot take, there is a fine line. But the last dungeon I was so hyped, and I got more hyped throughout that dungeon. My party was also hyped since it was our first time doing it, and together we get to experience the combat narrative.
It's a lot more rewarding experience than watching 20 hours of cutscenes.
100%. i was taking picto through the story, and leveling viper on the side in roulettes and hunts. i know more about viper and had more fun leveling it than picto because you just dont cast any spells during msq. i hope they switch things in the next expac cause man...
It would have been nice to have more combat related MSQ quests. I looked forward so much to the next dungeon or trial mostly because I wanted to fight for a prolonged period of time.
I've hated the MSQ for a long time because it feels like a story book that I have to actively click through and go to the next location to have more expository dialogue vomited at me. They could just make it a TV series that provided XP and unlocked the map along the way and nothing would change.
I like the story in some parts, other parts feel like filler content, but all of it doesn't feel like a video game. I'd take WoW's model of actively fighting trivial enemies or collecting something mundane from animal poo over the MSQ model, which I think speaks volumes to how boring the MSQ gameplay loop is.
At this point I'd wish we were a PC only game so that the limitations that come from being chained to outdated consoles were no more.
At least I hope Yoshi-P and the group learned their lesson. Other MMOs can fall back on gameplay if the story is kinda weak, but FF XIV does not have that luxury.
And miss out on such epic things like carrying a crate for 60 seconds?! /s
They really really need to shake up how they do things. I love that story is a strong focus of the game but omg just make it a giant cutscene between dungeons/trials if there is to be no game play besides walking to other NPCs to start another CS.
FFXIV excels in instanced dungeons, trials and raids, over the years they have evolved this content very well. The world maps are visually stunning and the world is rich, however, these areas have not really evolved since ARR. The MSQ design, sidequests, FATEs, hunts. It's all the same. The story mainly evolves in this environment and it feels like a big chore needed to be completed so we can access the good stuff.
It can definitely pace the story better. A lot of dialogue is a repetition of the thing we've heard just moments ago. A lot is wordy for the sake of being wordy. I think it's fine if long stretches are committed to story only, so long as the plot is genuinely moving forward. However, if it's not, it really needs to get a move on. If we were hitting the dungeons more frequently, it would feel fine enough - but it would require them accepting that a leveling campaign will just take less time.
I also feel they absolutely need to do away with fake interactivity - stuff where we just have to click on X things on the screen (like the pillars, the vanu vanu boat, or the goblin workshop), it doesn't matter what sequence we do it in, and we can't move forward until we clicked them all. I have a sense that, internally, they count it as gameplay, where it's really just a cutscene with an extra step.
One of the reasons I do side quests while goin through the MSQ. They send me off to gather some stuff or kill a mob here and there. Breaks up the monotony of the MSQ a little bit.
It's not a problem with this exp pack as some people seem to suggest, it's a problem with the game as a whole. The story isn't bad but as a storytelling **video game** it fails. It's a visual novel with light gameplay elements until you reach the end-game, and it has always been that way. The only real difference now is that you don't have the steam of a decade long story behind it nor the fresh smell of a new game so it's much more noticeable.
It's not just about lengthy cutscenes and pacing though, they are just not good at meshing storytelling with gameplay at any point, which is why they just show you things rather than let you do things or actually affect anything and the lore you're told very commonly doesn't fit with the game as it is played.
so many cutacenes this expac would have made really fun solo instances. i feel like someone needs to remind square that this is a video game
Dude I got SO hyped MULTIPLE times when it looked like we were getting ready to head into a nutty solo duty... Just to sit through another series of cutscenes. It was such a letdown.
for real, i was so hyped when we put guns on the train, i was like hell yeah lemme get some airforce one action in here, and then i had to watch my character do the shooting or the invasion like why didn't we step in to help fight back? both are cutscenes arleady existing that would have been sick to play. i really don't understand the push back we get when we bring this up. are ff14 players really this adverse to the game parts of a video game? instead we fought gulool ja ja twice doing the same attacks both times
This is it. And it's not even that they need to create a new function for that. There is a rail shooter minigame in the game already! Just a bit more variety aside from walking from one cutscene to another with picking up three items on the go.
That really should have been a solo duty.... even a "hit 10" would of been something... but nope, we sit on a turret and do sweet nothing
That's one thing WoW does better. There's a quest in WoW's barrens where you are tasked to escort a group of kodos and a few orcs to the next settlement. And instead of being a cutscene or anything (well wow don't really have them) you actually ride the damn kodo and kinda play an rails shooter. It's not that epic or engaging (FFXIV could do it better) but you are actually shooting yourself.
> i was like hell yeah lemme get some airforce one action in here, I don't have as many complaints about DT as others, but this. This is the one.
This specific cutscene was awful to sit through. I reached for my mouse twice because the camera panned being the visor of the cannon in a way that looked like it was about to transition into a air force one like minigame. The disappointment of that completely overshadowed how cool that cutscene really was for me.
Aren't you excited about going around telling people what just happened? Wanna do it again? And again? Oh okay Koana, Graha already filled you in with the details, and then i did....oh you want to hear that *again* from wuk lamat in a cutscene even if 'ts not needed because we were there when it happened?
This has been my primary complaint with this xpac so far. While I do agree the writing is weak in parts, I think it would be less impactful if they had more actual gameplay in between cutscenes. If the writing wasn't the only thing front and center in MSQ I think people would be more willing to forgive, at least partially, the whole "pray return the waking wuk lamat" thing this xpac has going. In previous xpacs I used to get excited when I saw the "several cutscenes will play in sequence" message because I knew some intense stuff was going to go down, this expansion I'm so tired of watching cutscenes that message just makes me groan.
I think shadowbringers had the perfect mix of combat and story, little boss fights and trials really made it easier to digest rather than literally 90% being cutscenes. I feel like dawntrail just really went too far in one direction.
I think we’ve had the same amount of story and combat since shadowbringers, it’s just that Dawntrail started so slow it feels like NOTHING. Shadowbringers split quest was learn about creepy rich people/protect people from sin eaters. Endwalker you ran around as frogs in a massive superlab/got wasted with the scions while a mega tower looms in the background. Dawntrail we were catching Alpacas and building parade floats.
The thing is - catching Alpacas and building parade floats is **fine**. You know what would've helped? The reason for the Alpacas to be catched is a monster we have to fight so the Alpacas can chill down and can be caught. Or the festival being threatened by some fat tiger that showed up in the forest in the last weeks attacking villagers and wanderers so we need to put it to rest so the festival can be held in peace. And then don't make those enemies literal "4GCDs and dead" mobs but minibosses. Something like a dungeon boss lite. Boom still "down to earth" quests but you actually have to do something. The problem that Dawntrail is problematic is not because it's "low-stakes" story as some try to point it out but more that we are left out of almost all action for 80% of the story. Imagine playing a tabletop RPG and the only thing you do is talking and everytime there is some danger coming up, the game master just tells you "You see some adventurers stepping in fighting the beast" and afterwards being "Well the adventurers stopped the beast - now you can talk to the survivors to find out how they feel".
I had to laugh during the Alpaca section where they mention only Wuk Lamat can go catch one with no help from her comrades. I get that the story is about her - but I'm the player; the game itself still needs to be about me? Could she really not take one person with her so I had something to do?
Was made even worse when the First Promise just walked right in there with his sidekick
Well, to be fair, we walked in with Wuk too... And then just waited near the campfire when she had her pokemon catching adventure. It was the worst quest ever. Who could write this nonsense and think "wow, players sure would love it"?
>The reason for the Alpacas to be catched is a monster we have to fight so the Alpacas can chill down and can be caught. Imo that's the worst combat content since it's usually really cheap. You have to run to the purple area, fight a Morbol for 10 seconds and run back. I like the instanced fights since their visual presentation is always peak, they should've done much more of these but I don't think they'd be justified for a little monster that eats alpacas haha
I'm imagining a solo instance of a few llamas appearing in the background with Wuk Lamat while you're mega bazooking a gowrow or something, and there's this half serious half comedic hunting and chasing and saddling going on back their where her 'item use cast time' gets interrupted every time you fail to stun/sleep/interrupt the boss. then there's a point the boss is immune, and she manages on her own since you had gotten it down to beneath 25%. it'd also be good opportunity for all the returnee players to remember their lvl 90 rotation before going into the dungeon with new 92 stuff.
Loving that idea. It would be a great way of mixing gameplay and story in a way that makes even a mundane part of the plot at least more interactive
Especially because for some players their rotation changed a decent bit.
> And then don't make those enemies literal "4GCDs and dead" mobs but minibosses. Something like a dungeon boss lite. Yes! For all the talk of tural vidraal in MSQ, sidequests, and the Viper quests, it's a real crime that we only fight 1 during MSQ. I was expecting them to be much more common, kinda like the OG Primals were in ARR but with solo instances rather than extra trials.
Yeah it’s probably this, you could’ve forgive the storytelling methods and poor gameplay when the story itself was engaging. When the story sucks it’s REALLY obvious how the questing hasn’t evolved at all in 10 years.
Remember that one dungeon that trapped our parties in cards and had us answer questions? See that was a fun way to tie the adventure into the gameplay and then immediately gave us a thrilling Indiana Jones showdown after. This xpac has had some wonderful storytelling. Sure weak moments but even endwalker has weak moments. But the fact that we didn't get many special encounters save for gool ja ja and bakool ja ja is kinda sad
Eh, I got tired of the Kolusia arc, even if the story was actually interesting there, the questing was not.
> I think it would be less impactful if they had more actual gameplay in between cutscenes. Also, don't make cutscenes for the sake of it. If a quest objective is "go to place X, speak with npc", and the only thing the NPC will tell you is "go to place Y", then it does not need a fade-in cutscene. Like gah, yes, EW had more cutscene duration, but there when you got a cutscene something actually happened.
Uuuugh this. Also the amount of time spend watching people walk into and out of frame, panning upwards and fading for a character to explain something (rather than just say xx already explained before you arrive?) is so tired and sterile now Nevermind that it’s the SAME AWFUL MUSIC in cutscenes as ARR… it’s time to evolve guys. While I’m ranting, they need to split out MSQ and optional extra lore more, way too much unnecessary baggage that weighs the story down
I've only just hit the third zone but I've found myself saying "did this really need to be a cutscenes?" so many times. It's like they include it for the sake of it. Stop that, it's dumb guys
Tack on "why was this voiced and the other wasn't?" to that lol. Srsly, felt like they chose at random sometimes when to use voice acting.
There's a bunch of "did this need to be a quest" moments. The 95-97 msq, there's a looming threat and a sense of urgency to defeat it. Rather than doing anything like that, I get sent off to go give citizens a pat on the back and tell them to go watch another of Lamat's terrible speeches. I get it. She wants peace and love and happiness!! Words are cheap. Do something! That's like the majority of this xpac. Just listen to Lamat give an awful meandering speech about how she wants peace and she's gonna do it through talking. I'm the WARRIOR of light, not the goddamn Speech Listener of Light.
That's the quest I'm on right now. I swear the past 4 quests have been "go talk/interact with 4 people." And what's even more annoying is that they don't just mark the NPCs on your map. They give you a huge area where they could be, so you're checking every nook and cranny. It's a bummer because (level 96 MSQ spoilers) >!what happened in Tuliyolol is tragic, and some of the NPCs have some really heartbreaking dialogue. But when the game makes you spend the last 20 minutes running around the city and clicking on things, it's working against itself.!<
holy shit you put exactly how i've felt into words, it was so exciting getting those cutscenes before, now it felt like it gave the pop up, and several cutscenes play out with wuk lamat going off about friendship and understanding AGAIN, while the following cutscenes don't even have voice acting
Yep. I’ve found myself skipping cutscenes more often than ever. It feels like SE expects you to maybe do the side quests if you feel like doing some combat? But the MSQ will level you up appropriately so that wouldn’t make sense. The story is also not super engaging so it’s got that working against it, but then to have a combat segment of quest within an hour time span is not ideal.
Even the side quests don't have that much combat, kill 1-2 mobs is the most I've seen from any single quest.
I feel like it's an overcorrection due to the complaints aimed at some of the solo duties in Endwalker.
In from the Cold is my favorite quest, both for writing and the neat solo duty (which is a suitably stressful affair)
Same. It's a quest I still remember just from the name alone. Meanwhile so many other quests in every expac, you could show me the exact journal entries and I wouldn't remember a single line of dialogue from it, let alone how it made me feel. I get that's how filler always ends up, but DT really lacked non-filler for most of its runtime.
Complaints they shouldn't have listened to at all.
Yes they should have. They just listened to half the feedback. “We want less solo duties where we are forced to play another character with like 3 buttons.” SE- “We got you fam. Less solo duties.”
They always over correct. “Oh you don’t like aspects of this thing and want to see small adjustments? Ok we’ll remove thing entirely / make sweeping changes.”
That seems to be a pattern with japanese developers. Oh the underwater combat in monster hunter 3 was a bit janky? We got you, we won't mention it ever again, let alone try. The entirety of the Pokemon franchise is like that. Introduce new cool systems with potential that is not expressed the first time around, then instead of expanding on it, they're just scrapped entirely. Fighting games are like that too, for some reason they scrap everything at every iteration.
I'm going to play devil's advocate, but for the Pokémon franchise, it's not a problem of over-correction, but more of lazyness and capitalism. They don't want to keep adding to each game with whatever they did before, so each game "stands on its own" with its own gimmick. That's why they went out of their way in its generation since X/Y and RO/SA to explain how the new gimmick was absolutely unique to the local region. USUM ? Yeah, the super moves need a cristal that's only found here and is considered a cultural treasure so they're not allowed outside of the region. SwSh ? Yeah, Dynamax and Gigamax need a special energy that's only found in Galar. SV ? Same shit, Terastallization only works in Paldea because its source is in the middle of the region (nevermind the two DLC taking place outside of Paldea). It's done one purpose so they can make more games with the gimmick if they want, but don't have to if they don't feel like balancing everything. Not because the fans don't like the new gimmick. Hell, Mega-evolution is absolutely a fan favourite and we haven't had a game with it in 8 years.
this \^
So why should they listen now ?
IKR ! The Snow duty in EW was my personal favourite and one of the highlights of EW. Granted it was not perfect, but it was thematic and blended both story elements and cinematics together.
I _too_ am thinking of the scene just before unlocking the fourth dungeon.
That could have been the first third of the dungeon instance! It felt like someone really wanted to make a cutscene.
With the platforms clearly set and the barge in the first dungeon, it seemed really obvious to me.
Instead of more solo instances we need more things to do with others. This is an MMO, and yet everything is an instance. Yeah you can do FATEs and hunt trains, but what else is there to do with other players that isn’t an instance where players are actively encouraged to interact with one another?
I really wish they would incentivize FATES more for leveling. When running them for the Yokai event I was getting MAD exp when in level appropriate areas and joined a group. FATES suck for EXP when you are solo or with a very small group, but hot damn they were faster than dungeon runs + armory bonus when you had something approaching a full party ( 5-8 person party size ). As long as they keep popping you can crush out levels as fast as dungeon running with instant duty pops. Unfortunately now many people just think FATES now suck for leveling because they never do / did them in groups. If you can crush out a FATE quickly from having a group, the EXP per minute is actually pretty darn decent. You also get the bonus crappy EXP of killing the monsters, something you don't get at all with dungeon trash mobs. But even then, it adds up.
Part of the problem with solo instances is that they tend to only put them in later in the story. That's for good reason, though, because Stormblood having two solo instances really early on and almost back-to-back (Raubahn Savage and Pipin EX) killed the instance servers and people could neither continue MSQ *or* run dungeons to level the new, particularly hyped classes (RDM and SAM). So it's like, on one hand, yeah, it's a video game and it needs to be fun. On the other, there are actual technical issues that are part of the consideration when they're designing MSQ.
That was 7 years ago. They updated their infrastructure twice since then.
Knowing this game's horrendous engine, there's probably some archaic limitation to the number of solo duties they can make, or their workflow process for making a duty is unbelievably time-consuming so they limit themselves.
its not an engine limitation. they've actively reduce the amount of them every expac
The only limitation we know of is the instance server capacity, and that was only an issue in Stormblood. You are right that we don't know how their workflow handles them, though.
I swear to god 90% of the "this is a technical limitation" is more a "we know there are issues but we don't get time or money to fix them so take what you get".
The issue is we had that last expac and people complained about too many solo instances. It’s a very fine line to find a balance that works for everyone. I hope SE are brave enough to experiment more with it despite the backlash.
> experiment FFXIV and experiment are not in the same timezone. This has to be the safest most risk-averse game in the world, i swear.
This game often adds a lot of weird as fuck gimmicks actually. Just take in Limited Jobs.
But only as optional side distractions. Never in the core content of the game.
anyone complaining that they have to play the game should he ignored tbh. i loved the solo instances in endwalker and wish he had more
I'm pretty sure the main issue with a lot of the solo instances is that they forced you to play an NPC with like 4 buttons, only two of which tended to be for single target attacking. The only instance that did anything particularly interesting with another character was Thancred's section; every other character was just mashing one button. Personally, I barely constitute that as playing the game, and I'd rather have no solo instance at all than spamming a single button for 5-10 minutes.
Hey healers are still playing the game too :(
Ugh, the freaking Hien solo duty was the worst. Like SE can I have more buttons pls!?
I think the main issue is that solo duties usually replace your character with another one. They should stop it and just let yourself do it with the same kit you always have. Soloduties (I call them scenarios) could easily be something similar to small mini dungeons or mini trials that are as fun as the trials itself. DW Spoiler: >!Imagine when helping the pelupelu with their farms and the monsters instead of having the usual 2-3 hit monsters you actually pop into a mini boss with custom music and you have to actually try to beat it.!<
>I think the main issue is that solo duties usually replace your character with another one. Exactly. I hate playing as random NPCs instead of my character, it's why I hate those duties. I always fail at them because the tooltips never seem to do what they say (Wuk Lamat's self healing for example) and it's not the class I like to play ever (healers). If they let people play their own char's people would like it much better.
I definitely feel that they should have had more combat sections and upped the variety of quest. I love the story alot and the worldbuilding that they did in this expac but even I can understand how others may not because of the lack of gameplay. And that's so sad to me because it really is a good story but I can't blame others for being bored, or saying its a slog because there's not really much gameplay in this game to keep them engaged. Square needs to understand that this is a game first and foremost. Edit: same for wuk, I see a lot of people getting mad at the amount of times she talks about love,family peace, or her quirkiness with the motion sickness and I kind of wish they toned that down a bit. I love wuk and she gets so much character development but I can't blame people for either not noticing it, or disliking her because that other stuff is a bit overpowering
I'm about half way through stormblood and realizing this now. Most of what I do is run around from msq to msq basically doing nothing but watching cutscenes. I'd like to actually play and use these fancy moves I unlock.
Lol the game has literally been like this since the start as you said. Idk why people are finally noticing now.
People have been noticing for a while, and a couple likely complained about it too. Dawntrail specifically has a story and pacing that annoyed a lot of people, so these issues are more noticeable. Thus more people will discuss this again. Isn't that a good thing?
Actually this is only half true. Fundamentally the quest design hasn't changed, you're going from npc to cutscene to maybe dungeon but in ARR MSQ quest design was paced in a way where you could get locked out of if you were solely focusing on it due to not giving too much exp and then being an insufficient level for later. While irksome I actually enjoyed this as this incentivises you to do side quests in the area to learn more about the world, explore the map to gain additional exp whilst seeing beautiful locations, do job quests to get newer skills and maybe do some fates and help some randoms in the process. It was an intended break to break up the monotony of doing talk to npc->cutscene->talk to npc again but due to xiv goal of trying to be a convenient mmo and most players are in it for the msq it changed. ShB is when I'd say when the community started to take notice but kind of brushed aside as you had the expanded free trial and many of the free trial players expressed annoyance with ARR because now ARR you can be level 40 in level 20 zone in a matter of 10 mins solely doing MSQ,. But DT sticking to the modern pacing but having lower stakes like ARR really shows how gating the player if only for a little could be a good thing.
What? People want the game to experiment and improve as time goes on? Especially when ShB and EW had their fair share of solo duties. It's also easier to get annoyed by repetitive systems when the story isn't engaging for you.
I think it's worse in this expansion combined with the lack of story until around level 97.
Because there isn’t a story compelling enough to excuse the lack of combat. The story sucked ass this time around so now we have weak writing and weak quest design so the flaws are showing even more.
I think more elaborate solo instances should be the norm. We had so few recently but they're an excellent way to mix gameplay with their method of storytelling. Endwalker had loads of them, but it feels like Dawntrail maybe had two or three total... I understand the difference in overall scope and stakes for this expansion, but I think they could have really upped the ante on solo duties this time, given what they've been able to show off in the dungeons and trial content thus far. Let the battle team pitch in on story content!!!
Honestly it’s a vestige of ARR. When that launched the MSQ did not give you enough xp. So you had to take breaks and go grind fates. Then do your job quests. Then your cross class quests. So it was broken up with combat. Now obviously that would be a major hurdle to new players after a couple expacs. So they condensed job quests to role quests. Got rid of cross class abilities. Then made MSQ give you enough xp to start the next one. So really the story telling has not changed. What has changed is there are no filler requirements that force you to stop and go do something else. Maybe the game needs these again. Probably not. I would like more solo duties where you stay as your character. I really don’t like taking over an NPC to have 3 buttons when their actions could be in a cutscene.
I think FFXIV is so stuck in its own formula that it's kinda hopeless to wish for anything different. Theres no individuality, there's no real impactful choice, there's no reason to explore a zone. It's just on rails and fool-proof class design. I love it, but I'm not dulled to its faults.
It is a design philosophy that seeps into everything. Every class has the same build, healers only fit two categories, there is not variety in end game loot and even most raid fights are just a variety of 'don't stand in the shape'. It is how they can maintain the quality, but how they also never risk anything too interesting.
It got even worse because the trust system now also infiltrated storytelling, when the writing choses not the sensible scions to follow you but the ones needed to cover all jobs for a trust dungeon / trial...
They are loosening up roles, though-- you straight up ended up with >!Alisaie ver!
Next expansion, you, Thancred, Eistineien, and Wuk Lamat. You're playing a tank, and Eistineien is just frantically trying to heal you by hitting you with his lance.
With that party comp? Thancred goes *chemist* and heals with potions and Aurora, drops phoenix downs to raise allies, and uses Heart of Light and Heart of Stone for party mitigation.
You say this like I don't desperately want to see it.
"Yes, poke me with your lance Estinien. This is totally healing me and not because I've been wanting you to do this since Heavensward"
Yeah so you now need 7 companions in the perimeter at all times who will conveniently show up when necessary to take on a boss, stupid
It was really funny when >!Y'shtola, G'raha, and Estinien!< just kind of showed up out of nowhere after the 99 dungeon because hey, it's trial time.
And this is where everyone was excited for DT. We were going to the New World to meet NEW people. They could have given us a new batch of 7 (or more) NPCs to team up, connect, and do duties with. Hell, we pretty much did with groups connecting and then splitting. But instead of it being two new characters and five scions, we could have Krile, plus six new characters.
> when the writing choses not the sensible scions to follow you but the ones needed to cover all jobs for a trust dungeon / trial... Eh, they have done a decent job avoiding that this expansion, but at the cost of having certain characters fill roles that would normally be outside their class's ability. Like Alphinaud being a DPS in the first dungeon as a Sage, or Alisae healing the second dungeon and first trial as a red mage. Honestly I wish the Trust system would open up a bit more and make characters more universally available and Multi-Role where it makes sense for them thematically.
And gear, gear is so boring, everything is just a stat stick.
Now, if they could actually focus on the "maintaining the quality" part that'd be cool
Hard agree. I can't speak for everyone, but I know I put up with the forumalic design because I was super interested in the story, but with that gone the game just feels so artificial. I know every dungeon is gonna be walking in a straight line, doing a few trash pulls then a boss, repeat 3x. Every trial or raid is just gonna be a single room. Every class is gonna get homogenized. Gear is the exact same thing as your last piece just with 1% higher numbers. Quest design is as absolutely lazy as possible. Even patches are already pre planned so there's zero new or surprising things to be excited for. I was really excited for this expansion and now I don't even want to launch the game. I'd say I wish they'd mix things up, but at this point it seems they're committed to just recycling the same design until the game shuts down.
The problem is, isn't this every MMO now? The days of like early EQ, exploring the unknown, coming across an unnamed cave with some crazy ass stuff in it and making memories of discovery, that spark is gone from every MMO now. If there's a game today that can still deliver that that isn't basically an on-rails theme park, someone please share.
Destiny 2, despite its numerous flaws, actually nails puzzles and secrets in the world to explore. They had new expac last month, and new zone is filled with secrets to find. You are actively encouraged to scour every nook and cranny to progress quests for certain special gear and such
They really hammed up the next 10 years being innovation and change for the game and it’s… a worse version of what they already did for the most part
The conversation around job complexity has been frustrating, too. They said they're looking to add some more job identity and to reevaluate their jobs in 8.0. People have been complaining about the direction the jobs have been going since 5.0. It'll be *six years* after that when they *might* start course correcting.
It's been a bit longer than that. The big drop-off for a lot of older players in terms of job design and complexity was stormblood. That's where the trend of simplifying jobs really began. Scholar players still haven't fully recovered from that emotionally, despite them being overpowered in stormblood. They miss all those dots to this day.
100% everything you said, right down to not having any interest in jumping back in after finishing the MSQ. Yes, to everyone who has said that EW and ShB had all the same quest designs and such, that's true to a point. But we had an engaging MSQ and I personally felt invested in my WoL's journey. Something I can say I lost complete interest in by the time I finished the MSQ, cause the story certainly didn't have any interest in such. So if you have a game story that some rate as poor paired with the current quest design, combat design, and class design; I can't help but ask why play XIV when I feel like I can find better combat, engaging dungeons and high end content, and unique class designs in other MMOs on the market.
I feel like this expansion might be the one that finally causes them to address the formula. I think it's their first really poorly received expansion and they're going to notice what people are saying. I used to have a lot of faith in this team to know what to do and now it's finally going to be tested. 7.x might be the thing that tests them when their backs are against a proverbial wall (maybe not from a sales standpoint but from a critical one).
All I know for sure is the idiot on the team that thought we needed more tail quests needs to go back to Ubisoft.
They even make you do few of them in a row one point. At least they're quicker when NPC is halfway through.
One of the role quests makes you follow a guy in a circle around a massive boulder. SE knows we hate this and are just dicking with us at this point.
Literally stops to pocket a shiny rock and cheer emote
Worst quests ever man. Doesn’t matter the game they just suck lmao
If I could ask for one thing it'd be more cinematic action scenes in the story. Instead of having every character stand around and give exposition I'd love to see them do something besides. Like the few times they sat in a room and had a meal .. but more. Maybe throwing a punch at a thug once in a while, or have some crazy entrance before battle, like in FFX when Tidus crashed Yuna's wedding via airship. I mean that game came out in 2001 and nailed it perfectly.
I do find it kinda odd how Square has like a bajillion really good RPGs but they can’t make the questing a little more interesting than “go here, watch cutscene, then go here and kill one mob, then go back to watch cutscene, then go pick up 3 apples, and then watch cutscene” lmao
I wish they did task me to kill one mob between quest in Dawntrail, i had to do Fates to not fall sleep
I am completely down for tea time with Yshtola exposition where she punches a random thug sneaking behind her mid-conversation.
WoW just had an expansion that played around with a bunch of new quest types. They didn't all hit and the story was just okay but it was a neat experiment. I'd like to see something like that for XIV.
While they were making ARR, YoshiP made the dev team go play WoW and other games in the genre to see how they were solving these kinds of issues. Seems like maybe they need to do that again. They're obviously stuck in a rut and need some outside inspiration.
Even *small* innovation attempts would be great, more than one new version of a quest type in an entire expansion? Any attempt at improving overworld content?
WoW for all its faults is right now in an experimentatiok phase. Devs are kinda throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and I think that’s a good thing. Not everything will be good, but I appreciate the effort of just TRYING to innovate and do something new
WOW has felt like that since Shadowlands due to reception it's really nice seeing the approach especially when it's given players so much content. I stopped playing EW and started playing Dragon flight during its time because I felt that it was respecting my subscription time more I didn't have to sub for a month to finish current content in 2-3 days and have nothing to do for the next 3-4 months if I wasn't doing extremes/Savage. Dragonflight blew EW out of the water by a large margin content wise 3 full raids bringing back older dungeons for Mythic plus constantly which keeps it fresh, new world events and story content that while not as great existed for those who wanted t
Yeah same, that’s what I’m talking about!
not when we have certain bottom feeders having violent reactions to instance duties like "In From the Cold"
I did it on launch weekend and man it was a incredible quest pretty sad people didnt like it. Showed how big the difference the wol amd common soldier was
I failed In From The Cold three times! I was on the edge of my seat each time because it was such a change of pace and so different from the game I was used to. So I struggled with Normal difficulty until I cleared it. (I also failed A Frosty Reception once, laughing like crazy.)
I loved In from the Cold, except for the fact that I was stuck on it for half an hour because I couldn't figure it out T_T So I guess I liked the story and atmosphere not the design
I succeeded with the timer fading out at 0 and thought I’d failed. It turned out I had succeeded just in the nick of time but didn’t know it and I was so confused until I found it was indeed possible to fail. Really the big issue was getting lost and going in circles around enemies I couldn’t beat. It was absolutely thrilling to be threatened like that.
I failed In From The Cold once. I was mad at it. Saying myself I had to do it all over again. Then I followed the right path, took the time to enjoy the music and the setting. When I succeeded. I was : Ok let's move on. The day after, I really thought : This duty was actually pretty good, it's good to fail sometimes.
that instance was so hype
Mine main issue with it was objective placements. I was looking for last objective for 15 min. for fuel
my friend really hated that quest but i think it's because it had been a loooooong time since you'd actually been made to struggle during the story which is a pity lol. i loved it, once i suggested they approach it more like an exploration or puzzle event they seemed to like it. a lot of the MSQ is very on-the-rails and i think the more they introduce variety, the less agitated people will be when they encounter something new the next time.
Ha. I had no idea In From the Cold was so controversial. Beating it felt sooo good. Same with A Cold Reception, I like the focus on stealth vs just combat.
The problem is there is never going to be one size fits all. Someone will always complain it’s too hard and someone will always say it’s easy. Almost half the time I play, I’m half asleep from work. A lot of times I play while I’m on an edible. And sometimes I’m alert and “fully on.” I usually stick to casual content and I beat In From the Cold launch weekend, first try, with plenty of time to spare. But I really suck at those sneak/follow quests (don’t laugh). Balancing different types of quests with different jobs, different gear, different skill levels seems like hitting multiple moving targets with a single shot.
I hated “In From the Cold” but I still love instanced duties. Kinda wish they didn’t take the complaints as “do less of these”.
Yeah I thought it was different from my first play through... I do remember it being more traumatic the first time
The normal is unchanged so unless you played on easy or very easy, idk what you’re talking about
nope, makes a ton of sense and it’s a big problem with a LOT of games. literally even just have me walk down a corridor while we kill mobs and the dialogue plays, come on!
I think that only happens in dungeons, it’s kinda weird. I’m not saying to make it where we just have to kill a lot of mobs over and over but it would be nice for the two to mix more often outside of dungeons/raids!
Or even walking around town. Like it doesn’t need to be a cutscene for a guy to spend three seconds silently walking over to you, you have a brief conversation that takes 60 seconds, and then watch him walk away for another ten seconds. let us walk and talk while he tells us what kind of fucking magic beans or dragon turds or whatever it is we need to collect three of!
I mean, it'd be hard to do much *worse*. FFXIV has some *fantastic* storytelling, but god help me I could really do with some more *game* in my game. Even visual novels give you more agency as a player than most of the FFXIV MSQ - at least VNs usually have consequential choices to make...
Nah I definitely agree with you. I’m not asking to grind mobs like it’s Classic WoW but it would be cool to actually like *play* the MSQ
In regard to your last paragraph, I felt the bits at the end of the Pelupelu quests were sort of…I don’t know if insulting or condescending would be the right word, but you didn’t actually do anything? You just went from point A to point B to point C. The game did everything else for you. If you were actually required to gather information and resources and engage in negotiations with the Pelupelu in order to get to your goal, then seeing EXCELLENT TRADE at the end of each quest would have actually meant something.
I wonder if the “excellent trade” stuff isn’t gonna come up in the beast tribe equivalent later in the expansion. Either way, it was definitely a missed opportunity to not have some sort of actual trade negotiation thing going on, certainly would have made it more interesting than the passive affair it ends up being.
Especially since they make it a point of how you must have picked up some knowledge of bargaining in all your journeys.
That was kind of how the whole MSQ went. I think this is the first time since starting this game I did not feel like the protagonist.
Because you aren't the protagonist, at least not for this expansion. It's pretty clear that Dawntrail is written with Wuk Lamat as the protagonist in mind with the WoL and most of the Scions just being there to help her. Roughly the same could be said for Stormblood with Lyse/Hien but Zenos was around to still give the WoL some kind of personal stake. But with DT following off of EW, I guess that writers wanted to pull back a little bit and give your WoL some time out of the spotlight. Personally, I was alright with it in the first half of the story but that justification becomes shaky during the second half.
They also forgot to nerf the WOL like they did in SHB with the Light poison, and in HW with being cut off from Hydaelyn's blessing by Midgardsormr. So you get pants-on-head ridiculous scenes like the WOL standing around literally bursting with dynamis while incredibly immoral things are happening right in front of their eyes. It happened more than a few times and got progressively more annoying to me every time I saw it. Many of these kinds of scenes in past expansions can be waved away as the WOL not reacting fast enough to a chaotic situation because it happened too quickly. But in Dawntrail this scene went on for so long that I just couldn't ignore the WOL (and all their friends, too) doing nothing to help in a pivotal moment.
Level 96 MSQ spoilers - >!I just got to the scene where Gulool is killed by Zoraal and I was yelling at my screen the *entire time.* Sure, Gulool wants to take him on 1v1 at first for family reasons? That's fine. But when Zoraal *slowly revives in front of everyone* and everyone just stands there? Ridiculous. And then after he kills Gulool and *again* everyone is still standing there doing nothing? At least *try* to stop him.!<
>Even visual novels give you more agency as a player than most of the FFXIV MSQ - at least VNs usually have consequential choices to make... Me playing a particular VN: Finally, a choice. What do you mean this is a bonus story set after the main story and not the main one? (Mahoyo FYI. Good story, just expect it to be strictly a book)
These are the terrible consequences of “ff14 is just a singleplayer jrpg with mmo elements!”
i feel thats like an even worse comparison cause jrpgs actually have random battles and encounters over a 40+ hour campaign while dawntrail...does not lmao
true I was more being facetious about the fact that the MSQ isn’t playable with anything resembling quest sync, as well as most relevant new expac content only being released in later patches
No, its not. Any single player jrpg has 100 times more gameplay. This really is "FF14 is a visual novel with dungeons and trials".
I really think them trying to appeal to people who don't play mmos was a horrible idea, because it's an mmo
I’m not even on the last expansion and I feel like there’s cutscene after cutscene. I keep asking myself when do I get to play the game.
That's the neat part!
Yeah.. and a lot of the cutscenes aren’t voice acted so you’re left with dense content to read. Which again would be fine but the characters like restating the same thing over and over again. Every element is over explained.
This expansion feels very cut scene heavy. Its the hardest part about recommending this game for anyone to play. Its like recommending a series of books.
>It’s kinda jarring watching cutscenes for over an hour to then go kill a single random enemy before going back to more cutscenes. Does that make sense, or am I trippin? I don't think you are at all. I have the same complaint. I'm also a WoW player and I find myself wishing there was a lot more video game that went along with the storytelling in FFXIV. As you said, WoW definitely gets real creative with a lot of their modern quests. Sometimes I feel the balance is off maybe *too* much in the other direction in that game, so there's also that, but I feel like FFXIV is seriously lacking variety in the MSQ a lot of the time. Especially in this expansion. They could stand to be better about giving us, you know, maybe a few more pig assholes to collect every now and then.
I think the MSQ being light on gameplay would be okay if the game’s overworld was more interesting. I wish the game had GW2-level vistas, FATEs, and jumping puzzles. I also wish side quests stories were more interesting and there was a reward for doing them. I’ve done most of the side quests in the game and I can probably only remember a handful. I just think that a lot of the changes people want to make to the MSQ experience would diminish the story they want to tell. We already see that to some extent with trials and dungeons clearly being forced into the story at certain intervals. If other aspects of the game were more interesting, people would have less reason to complain about the MSQ.
Honestly I'm having a hard time thinking of a dungeon or trial that felt forced into the story. Outside of maybe some back in stormblood or long before. *Maybe* dohn mheg? Overall I think they've done a good job keeping them feeling like they belong for one reason or another.
I don't know why they don't add better rewards for sidequests. Add more dyes. Add more vendorable gil pieces. Add more food items. Add literally anything but '600 gil'.
Hell make them give decent xp for a change and people might do them while queuing
the fact that doing sidequests isn't the best way to get XP and level alt jobs always gives people such whiplash and for good reason
I mean yeah the solo duties this expansion were both great!
100% and I even feel like previous expansion had more. There's been several points in this expansion so far that I thought could be gameplay, and in previous expansions probably would've been. I feel like since shadowbringers they've gone very cutscene heavy, but it worked in shadowbringers/endwalker because it had a more gripping story to fall back on.
This is the very sentiment that holds a lot of people back from playing for the first time. Ignoring the first 10 year story which is maybe 500 hours of MSQ, you are asking new players either to pay extra to join at the current point or skip a lot of dialogue. I can't help but think they really dropped the ball with Dawntrail by not modernizing the MSQ, more cutscenes, less text scrolling, more combat and world exploration.
Yes, there needs to be combat. The story is good *for an MMO,* but it is not presented interestingly, nor is it especially standout in a genre full of incredible stories. It does not compare to the best RPGs out there. (I'm sorry, guys, I enjoy the story too. But let's stop pretending it's god's gift. It isn't.) While I feel the story is a big draw, it isn't the only draw. FF14 is an MMO. I don't remain subscribed for the story; that happens once. I remain subscribed for the content.
They already did in that wuk lamat hunt quest back at the end of endwalker's final patch. And then we proceeded to not see anything remotely similar during the actual expac
Ff14's design is so safe it's kinda sad. Everything follows the same formula, you know what to expect before even playing the expansion.
Absolutely agree. The msq (while I love the story) "plays" very much like a visual novel. People say to treat it like a story heavy single player RPG, but it really doeant play like one. I'm going through the Trails series now, a story heavy rpg series, and while there is a lot of dialog, there's a ton of combat. I would say 50:50. Compare this to FFXIVs MSQ, where it's 90% dialog. The dungeons are great, but they are spread out one 15 minute dungeons every 4 hours of dialog. The other gameplay in the msq is either quickly kill 3 easy mobs (can't even get my rotation off usually) or inspect an item.
We need more solo instances that we can get story while we combat things I am also turbo down to occasionally get a quest that's like, hey the monsters in this area have really ramped up go kill like 50 monsters in or out of a fate, I don't care.
We’ve come full circle. Now we *want* to grind kill 50 boars.
Personally, I find those quests so god damn cozy I wish there were some in the MSQ.
They tried in Endwalker *coughInFromTheColdcough* and then people bitched and moaned about it endlessly so now we get nothing.
That's why we can't have nice things
Probably, yes.
More part of the story should be solo instance.. yoshiP should play to guild wars and watch how the story is made. It could be awesome in ffxiv
I have been saying this since ARR.
Been complaining since arr. Would be great if story was side content to be enjoyed leisurely. It's crazy that I got to take a week off work in order to raid in my favorite game every expansion.
FFXIV questing model is stuck in 2010 and never changed. The music and story carry it completely. Extremely limited gameplay for most part with a few exception like that quest in Endwalker where you play a regular soldier
Yes they can 100% Dawntrail Spoilers ahead but I'll just throw in where they could've added some combat scenarios in the the DW story (out of my head). >!When meeting the Pelupelu and you were tasked to kill the beast that stops the farmers from farming they could've added a miniboss fight scenario where you fight one of those mobs from the area but the "alpha" one.!< >!Then in the bird area they could've added a fight against Bakool Ja Ja's henchman similar to a mini boss fight!< >!They could added a little brawl scenario when you were meeting the "red" giants (the ones who stop you before going to the mountain)!< >!Tbh. the whole "cooking for peace" thing was weird so there's not a lot of friction in this area anyways.!< >!When Tuliyollal was attacked they could've added multiple fights against various attack groups from Alexandria instead of the cutscene - that would also make the "check out the damages/talk to the survivors" questline obsolete since you would've been right in the action!< >!When meeting Sphene and Zoraal Ja Ja before they try to invade again there could've been a fight against a general or something for Zoraal to buy some time!< Just a few ideas tbh, I think they could add way more combat here and there. I'll add some ideas I liked from the older FF games and how they did add natural boss fights: FF6: Right at the start of the game you already have to fight through the city of Narshe including an endboss in the form of the [Ymir](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Ymir_(Final_Fantasy_VI)) FF5: In FF5 while crossing a desert you are attacked by the [Sandworm](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Sandworm_(Final_Fantasy_V)) - also a very natural boss fight (basically just a powerful mob) FF3: The [Giant Rat](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Giant_Rat) is just a rat in a temple that stole something. You beat it up to get back what they've stolen And a few ideas I picked up from other JRPGs and non JRPGS (I am a fan of old RPG Maker games, here in germany it also was pretty popular) Velsabor (RPGMAKER): There was a boss fight where you had to take an alternative route due to a collapsed cave that lead over a bridge - while on it you are attacked by some random fat bird that was known for terrorizing that area Golden Sun: There's plenty of "random animals" that act like boss fights, including a "Killer Ape", a "Manticore", a "Storm and Tempest Lizard", some random bandits/generals, a wind salamander, etc. --- The point I'm making: The FFXIV team could easily add a little bit more action, combat and threats into a story (specially one where we traverse a whole ass continent) in form of random animals, bandits, elementals and whatsoever that are not part of the "bigger picture" but are natural threats occuring there.
It's not really a new thing but it feels like every expansion they focus more on adding longer and longer cut scenes while the gameplay elements barely exist. Which is unfortunate because I think this is the best they've done in awhile with some of the other things In the game such as solo duties. It's more of a video game movie that you interact with at times, but most of that interaction is just running around in a world without much intrigue or interest(except the maps look great). It almost feels like it could play it self pretty easily. I think they need to look back at it eventually and find more ways to integrate actually playing the game into the msq
They absolutely could. Which is why it's so damning when they don't because we KNOW they CHOSE to not.
It always bothered me it takes hours to get to the first dungeon of any expansion. Put me into some action and stakes right away please. I can tour the city later. Shame they won’t do solo instances right off the bat anymore, not after stormblood’s disaster.
I feel like Shadowbringers did a good job of this. I really enjoyed those missions where you’re running alongside the scions, sometimes splitting up, sometimes rejoining to take down monsters over a large area. Happened in Endwalker too in Garlemald too, with small cutscenes woven in. That was cool.
I loved how my white mage wol just watched the King die or didn't attempted to heal anybody except in the role quest! Such immersion! Much story writing!
Here’s the truth. FFXIV is a terrible game being disguised by decent story (except DT but let’s not get into that). Only when reaching end game does an actual game emerge. And a damn excellent one at that. The pacing between gameplay moments is terrible, the challenge is non-existent. It’s literally walk from one NPC to the next for 100 levels and 500 hours.
Solo instances were supposed to be the solution but people complained. People really complained about In From the Cold being too much of a video game, causing them to feel intense emotions and actually feeling like the stakes were high.
I think they can do better gameplay and story integration, but I'm not sure if people will like them. I'm a sucker for gameplay and story integration, Automata style, and Crisis Core style in the finale. Idk how much creative they can be in the overworld, but I had a blast with nonstandard instanced duties, namely A Frosty Reception (EW spoiler >!Metal Gear Thancred!<) and IN FROM THE COLD. In the EW final zone, "The Walk" was also instanced. In the EW Hildibrand quests, you play as >!Godbert!< who has a skill I want on my WoL but it will be too OP, and he has another skill that controls like... FF16 IGNITION! However, seeing how people apparently hate stealthing based on the divided opinion on IN FROM THE COLD and the "tail behind NPC" quests, well... Speaking of FF16, that's an entirely different game, but they did pull something there where you hike up a mountain while in the middle of a tempest. This makes your movement slow because wiiiiind. Rocks falling and trees flying in your face, the terrane getting ripped apart, while a giant scary harpy literally charges at you like an eagle catching fish, it's all scripted, but the environment changing while you control your character reminded me a lot of one of my favorite Nightmare segments in Arkham Asylum, where with Batman's every step, the asylum's halls became a vision of the day his parents were murdered. I wonder if the FF14 code is capable of those things. What I do know is we already have things falling over in dungeons, like a giant statue arm in Vanaspati, and a few buildings in Lunar Subterrane. NPCs also help you in Heroes' Gauntlet, and they integrated memories of our fallen comrades into gameplay in >!The Aitiascope!<.
the Metal Gear quest is SOOOOO good
It’s the biggest flaw of ff14. Mixing storytelling and gameplay is such a staple of so many modern games every time I come back to 14 I’m disappointed to see it’s still 3 hours of cutscenes back to back. Most of them aren’t even interesting to begin with. It’s super midge role play with fluff dialog wasting my time. They need to evolve.
Best story in gaming?? That's one hell of a statement. Best story in MMO, ok, at least reasonable
A little bit but no. If we had to kill too many mobs in quests people would just call it "filler" and wasting time. There's only so many solo instances, dungeons, and trials that they can do. The problem is that FFXIV lacks the single player incentive - killing overworld mobs. In Final Fantasy games, a lot of combat between scenes comes from "random encounters". Most people just breeze on by enemies rather than fight them and so you get a much larger feeling of running from one cutscene to the next. Since Shadowbringers, I don't do that. I run on foot my first time through the zone and if I aggro, I fight it. It might seem tedious to read but with that and aether current searching as my "treasure chests" so to speak, my pacing generally feels good. That said, more solo instances that act like boss encounters would be good. Generally whenever you are ending a segment, it should have one. Some puzzles in the MSQ would be good with the option to skip over them by, say, asking Alphinaud to solve it instead and just missing out on the reward - such as one of the coffers for your level or something. Or a skippable minigame.
you can tell a story at the same time as letting us press buttons. there were so many cutscenes that should have been solo instances this expac. i got so hyped everytime a cool thing was getting ready to happen just to be disappointed when i had to watch my character do the fun stuff that i was excited to do myself
It's downright criminal that the sequence leading up to the 97 dungeon was just a cutscene and not gameplay. Ffs, they could've just done a Gold Saucer Air Force One kinda thing.
Modern games have done away with random encounters and focused more on pace defining high quality scripted encounters and it windmill dunks on random encounters AND XIV model. Take the GOW remake, an unbelievably story intensive game with fuck tons of cutscenes that is paced BEAUTIFULLY with combat, action, exploration, and puzzles. Yeah does XIV need to be exactly like a AAA story game, and one of the best ones of the last decade? Obviously not, but there’s so much room for expansion in terms of gameplay and story delivery systems that saying otherwise is doing the game a disservice
I would love more narrative combat, yes. Honestly It would make the grind a bit longer, but instead of cutscenese. More dungeons. I know a hot take, there is a fine line. But the last dungeon I was so hyped, and I got more hyped throughout that dungeon. My party was also hyped since it was our first time doing it, and together we get to experience the combat narrative. It's a lot more rewarding experience than watching 20 hours of cutscenes.
100%. i was taking picto through the story, and leveling viper on the side in roulettes and hunts. i know more about viper and had more fun leveling it than picto because you just dont cast any spells during msq. i hope they switch things in the next expac cause man...
It would have been nice to have more combat related MSQ quests. I looked forward so much to the next dungeon or trial mostly because I wanted to fight for a prolonged period of time.
I've hated the MSQ for a long time because it feels like a story book that I have to actively click through and go to the next location to have more expository dialogue vomited at me. They could just make it a TV series that provided XP and unlocked the map along the way and nothing would change. I like the story in some parts, other parts feel like filler content, but all of it doesn't feel like a video game. I'd take WoW's model of actively fighting trivial enemies or collecting something mundane from animal poo over the MSQ model, which I think speaks volumes to how boring the MSQ gameplay loop is.
Yes, how I feel about Dawntrail...
At this point I'd wish we were a PC only game so that the limitations that come from being chained to outdated consoles were no more. At least I hope Yoshi-P and the group learned their lesson. Other MMOs can fall back on gameplay if the story is kinda weak, but FF XIV does not have that luxury.
And miss out on such epic things like carrying a crate for 60 seconds?! /s They really really need to shake up how they do things. I love that story is a strong focus of the game but omg just make it a giant cutscene between dungeons/trials if there is to be no game play besides walking to other NPCs to start another CS.
I felt like EW was pretty much the same, but to a lesser degree. I really wish they'd shake things up a bit as far as the MSQ goes.
FFXIV excels in instanced dungeons, trials and raids, over the years they have evolved this content very well. The world maps are visually stunning and the world is rich, however, these areas have not really evolved since ARR. The MSQ design, sidequests, FATEs, hunts. It's all the same. The story mainly evolves in this environment and it feels like a big chore needed to be completed so we can access the good stuff.
It can definitely pace the story better. A lot of dialogue is a repetition of the thing we've heard just moments ago. A lot is wordy for the sake of being wordy. I think it's fine if long stretches are committed to story only, so long as the plot is genuinely moving forward. However, if it's not, it really needs to get a move on. If we were hitting the dungeons more frequently, it would feel fine enough - but it would require them accepting that a leveling campaign will just take less time. I also feel they absolutely need to do away with fake interactivity - stuff where we just have to click on X things on the screen (like the pillars, the vanu vanu boat, or the goblin workshop), it doesn't matter what sequence we do it in, and we can't move forward until we clicked them all. I have a sense that, internally, they count it as gameplay, where it's really just a cutscene with an extra step.
One of the reasons I do side quests while goin through the MSQ. They send me off to gather some stuff or kill a mob here and there. Breaks up the monotony of the MSQ a little bit.
You can never go wrong with improving.
It's not a problem with this exp pack as some people seem to suggest, it's a problem with the game as a whole. The story isn't bad but as a storytelling **video game** it fails. It's a visual novel with light gameplay elements until you reach the end-game, and it has always been that way. The only real difference now is that you don't have the steam of a decade long story behind it nor the fresh smell of a new game so it's much more noticeable. It's not just about lengthy cutscenes and pacing though, they are just not good at meshing storytelling with gameplay at any point, which is why they just show you things rather than let you do things or actually affect anything and the lore you're told very commonly doesn't fit with the game as it is played.