Originally Posted by
Katchii
I thought the exact same thing through my first time. Then I did it a couple other times to re-experience it since it had been a while and I also wanted to see the 1~15 experience in each of the city states. There are very large swaths of the leveling experience where ALL you're doing is talking to people, traveling/teleporting back and forth, clicking on an object and just reading quest text. Which isn't BAD, per se, but it's pretty boring. If you're invested in the story, it's totally fine, but not everyone cares that much about it. Having to spend 30+ minutes (or up to an hour or more if you read and watch everything in some areas) to get to an action sequence where you actually get to draw your weapon...and then only having it last 30 seconds is pretty lack luster. Dungeons are a little different, but after a certain point those are more spread out.
I bolded your last part for emphasis. "Chill" is a good word to describe the story telling experience of FFXIV since you do more reading text, watching cut scenes, and traveling than you do actively participating.
I agree that the leveling, questing and story experience are stellar in FFXIV...for people who CARE about story, when they care about it (as I care too...just not all the time, typically on subsequent play throughs). I personally think SWTOR integrated story telling and leveling a little better as far as game play is concerned, as it's just better balanced. FFXIV is very narrative centric, where the story typically is told to you through dialogue or cutscene. SWTOR is more experience centric, where you interact and take an active role in the story telling pieces rather than just have it narrated to you.