The story isn't that good

[Katchii]

That's not true at all. Every one of those players running around is a warrior of light. Just because it's not being told to them that way doesn't mean it's not the truth. That's the problem.

It's 100% true. Nowhere within your gaming experience does FFXIV say the other adventurers/ players you group with are Warriors of Light. Nowhere.

In most games, my outside knowledge of what is happening isn't contradicted by what the game is telling me or trying to pretend is happening.

So...you knowing that a million other people are playing the exact same game as you, with the exact same character and exact same story doesn't isn't contradicting anything? How does it do it in FFXIV? As I said before, nowhere within th context of the game does FFXIV reveal or show you that the other adventurers you play with are Warriors of Light.

Again, I don't have to do this for any good single player RPG and I don't have to do it with more generic story driven MMOs.

Which MMO's? Because I've played a LOT of them, and in the vast majority of them the story is told as if you're the only character like you in the world. WoW, SW:ToR, ESO, Rift, Blade and Soul, TERA, Aion, etc... The only one that has some wiggle room that I can think of is The Secret World however that's more implied than anything else. As you play the game your character is the only one doing the quests, the game world just allows for other people to have powers like you, but you're the only one experiencing and progressing through the story.

Not at all. It is a known fact that every other one of those players running around is the warrior of light. They can't simultaneously be "the warrior of light" in their story and also be just some normal dude in everyone else's. That's not how the warrior of light works or how it's marketed to you, but that's exactly how it's treated.

Any knowledge you have about the other characters and their stories comes from outside the game though. So the game doesn't "lie" to you or disagree with itself. Within the confines and context of your in-game experience you're the only Warrior of Light.

Game story telling: " You're the one true hero, I swear!"
Game mechanics: "Literally everyone else running around is the one true warrior of light in their own little slice of life. I lied >"

Again, the game never lies to you. The marketing for this game is the same as pretty much every other game. The purpose is for you to experience a story, this one just has other players involved. Every other player of every other game will experience the same story as you do. Within the context of the in-game world, the other characters are just adventurers. Nowhere within the game's story is that ever contradicted.

Stop telling me why my opinion's logic is garbage and start just saying you dislike my opinion and you don't have a problem with ignoring inconvenient truths just to enjoy a story. I do. People looking to feel special in an MMO should either gitgud and become someone special or accept the fact they're not.

Your opinion's logic is extremely flawed though. The game never lies to your character, you as the player know things your character doesn't. Which is the same as any other single player game too, you as a player have additional knowledge your character doesn't. You're letting that ruin your experience.

It's not "ignoring inconvenient truths," it's suspension of disbelief. But you've just admitted that you have a problem with it. It's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with you and your inability to suspend your disbelief about this one facet of the gaming experience of FFXIV. It's not a problem with the game's story.

And WTF does "gitgud" have anything to do with this?

[BeepBoo]

Nowhere within your gaming experience

In an MMO, it's not just selfishly about your personal experience. It's about the entire world, a'la red dead redemption 2 style live world, at the same time, existing as ONE. Ergo, every other person being told it innately invalidates every person getting told that story. End of discussion. Doesn't matter where the knowledge originates from.

So...you knowing that a million other people are playing the exact same game as you, with the exact same character and exact same story doesn't isn't contradicting anything? How does it do it in FFXIV? As I said before, nowhere within th context of the game does FFXIV reveal or show you that the other adventurers you play with are Warriors of Light.

I know there are millions of other dragonborns running around in COMPLETELY SEPARATE WORLDS that never EVER intertwine with mine in Skyrim. Not the same with any multiplayer game that uses lazy single player "one true hero" focused delivery when the game is innately unsupportive of that.

Which MMO's? Because I've played a LOT of them

LoL. Pubg. Basically any MMO that forgoes traditional story telling. Inb4 "Those aren't MMOs!" No, they are. They aren't MMO *RPGs*



Any knowledge you have about the other characters and their stories comes from outside the game though. So the game doesn't "lie" to you or disagree with itself. Within the confines and context of your in-game experience you're the only Warrior of Light.

Your opinion's logic is extremely flawed though. The game never lies to your character, you as the player know things your character doesn't. Which is the same as any other single player game too, you as a player have additional knowledge your character doesn't. You're letting that ruin your experience.

I don't care about what it says to my character, I don't like games where my PLAYER knowledge contradicts my character knowledge. Any game with a good story I've ever played didn't have that issue.

And WTF does "gitgud" have anything to do with this?

If you want to be the one true hero of a game, you better ACTUALLY be so good that stats, etc, support it. Like being a 2600 gladiator, rank 1 parser, etc.

[Katchii]

I don't care about what it says to my character, I don't like games where my PLAYER knowledge contradicts my character knowledge. Any game with a good story I've ever played didn't have that issue.

This is where your logic falls apart for me every time. Your player knowledge contradicts, enhances, changes, or is different from your character knowledge in every game you play. You have outside knowledge or information your character doesn't in every game.

You trying to say that this negatively affects your experience in FFXIV but doesn't affect your experience in other games just doesn't make any sense.

To your point about MMO's, the RPG part matters. Any MMO I've played where there is no RPG element also has very little if any story element so I don't really understand the logic of bringing up a game who's purpose isn't even to try and tell a story and then say the story in that game is better than one where story is one of the driving elements. You even said that it "forgoes traditional story telling." So you're arguing that a game that isn't meant to do story...does story better than a game designed to tell a story? GTFO.

[Puzzlesocks]

Having recently gotten back into the game, I find myself skipping cut scenes as quickly as possible and reading a synopsis on a website instead. In my own experience, I feel like I paid to play a game and end up spending 1/4 to a 1/2 of my time in game stuck in cut scene after cut scene, about a solid 1/4 of my time in travel, and the remaining 1/4 actually doing something resembling action. $15/month is pretty cheap for the amount of entertainment a game like this provides, but I find it increasingly frustrating with my progression minded attitude and I feel more like I am watching a mediocre movie than playing a game. It's more enjoyable sitting in queue for dungeons and leveling botany or mining than it is going through the main story. Alas your progression is capped by the main story so you are forced to sit through mindless hours upon hours of watching your "warrior of light" function as a lemming.

If we are talking story quality alone, if they gave the scions even half the amount of backbone or determination as the evil side has, there would be no more issues. I recently had a cut scene where you first slowly defeat a garlean, he tries to escape and gets blocked by rebels (even being told there is no escape), and then after a short battle you watch him skip off into the distance right past the rebels currently performing a pincer attack on him. It's as though the side of "light" is functioning at critical thought levels equivalent to a root vegetable, and I often find myself wishing my character wasn't associated with any of them. The one leading the pincer attack was an archer for gods sake, at least fire an arrow at the enemy slowly trotting off.

If we are talking involvement in the story, it gets even more frustrating for me as a healer class, watching all these characters die or get injured as my insane levels of healing ability go to waste. I can't imagine the amount of work that would go into having seperate storylines based off your place in the mmo triad, but good god is it annoying watching a character slowly die, and gaining back control of my character to stare at a screen full of healing spells.

My biggest complaints: I just finished the level 70 scholar questline and actually enjoyed it. My only complaint is that they haven't figured out that putting the NPC's in a faux party with you as they do your chocobo companion would make way more sense and your life as a healer much easier. Though it was too bad that I was 70 before I was even allowed to begin the 60-70 content. At the rate I am going by being limited in progression by the story, I will already be 80 before I start shadowbringer content. I don't want to level 2-3 different classes in equal measure just so I can maintain some level of equality with the storyline.

The inventory system and UI is hot garbage, I especially dislike how "greed to sell" gear gets randomly mixed into your armory chest, and then makes gear you might want to use get trapped in your normal inventory which causes all sorts of other small annoyances.

[kenn9530]

In an MMO, it's not just selfishly about your personal experience. It's about the entire world, a'la red dead redemption 2 style live world, at the same time, existing as ONE. Ergo, every other person being told it innately invalidates every person getting told that story. End of discussion. Doesn't matter where the knowledge originates from.


I know there are millions of other dragonborns running around in COMPLETELY SEPARATE WORLDS that never EVER intertwine with mine in Skyrim. Not the same with any multiplayer game that uses lazy single player "one true hero" focused delivery when the game is innately unsupportive of that.


LoL. Pubg. Basically any MMO that forgoes traditional story telling. Inb4 "Those aren't MMOs!" No, they are. They aren't MMO *RPGs*



Any knowledge you have about the other characters and their stories comes from outside the game though. So the game doesn't "lie" to you or disagree with itself. Within the confines and context of your in-game experience you're the only Warrior of Light.


I don't care about what it says to my character, I don't like games where my PLAYER knowledge contradicts my character knowledge. Any game with a good story I've ever played didn't have that issue.


If you want to be the one true hero of a game, you better ACTUALLY be so good that stats, etc, support it. Like being a 2600 gladiator, rank 1 parser, etc.

The only MMO with good stories is SWTOR and it highly focuses on them, every other MMO stories are average and mainly just to get you to the end, even in an MMO your essentially playing a single player RPG where its only about your story no other player matters, every other MMO essentially puts the player as a powerful entity ignoring that there is more than one player.

End of the day the story in an MMO is a small part of playing the game.

[Swnem]

To be honest as a recent convert the hardest thing for me with FF14 compared to WoW are the complicated as hell names they have that are thrown at you in a completely different language then drip fed to you. Up to level 20 I had NO CLUE wtf was going on in the 1st cinematic even after they explained who they were fighting against.

I got a very FF15 vibe to the story like I had not been shown some series or comic that tells you wtf is going on. I am piecing it together and very much enjoying the experience as I get a very Classic wow experience from the game so far with the RPG elements not stripped out like retail WoW.

That would be cause there is in fact something you skipped, as many of us did. The original FFXIV where the characters come from.
But, with new game+ coming, you can replay the story mode with your newfound knowledge in the future.
I am planning to replay Stormblood myself cause i skipped a good portion and in retrospect i would like to have read it.

[Soluna]

I don't understand why everyone is riding stormbloods dick for the story. It's like no one has ever played anything other than the disjointed trash in WoW.

FF14 MSQ is like a 5 at best, it can be interesting at times, but 99% of the time it's boring and no different than a random side quest lol. It's even extremely formulaic and repetitive like a side quest, unlike GW2 where huge events and fights are happening all through out, not saying that games story isn't shit but it feels like a story at least.

ESO sidequests have better story

It's just really baffling me because I'm still waiting for it to get good or exciting at 78 and 1 zones left.

So far I've only enjoyed the instances, obviously the games strong point, but everywhere I look online it's all about stormbloods story...

I guess I've been spoiled after playing everything , but this shit is childs play. Maybe it's the oldschool presentation and this game is really restrictive engine so there can't be exciting stuff going on. FF14 is decent but I think this games community defends it a little much and not honestly.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone 'riding Stormblood's dick'. If anything, a lot of people liked it less than Heavensward...
I would say that the stories of each expansion rank up in the following way for most people:

Shadowbringers > Heavensward >> Stormblood >> ARR. Now if you are talking about Shadowbringers, and mixed the names, I sort of doubt you paid proper attention to the story, if you mixed the expansion names :S

[Swnem]

Having recently gotten back into the game, I find myself skipping cut scenes as quickly as possible and reading a synopsis on a website instead. In my own experience, I feel like I paid to play a game and end up spending 1/4 to a 1/2 of my time in game stuck in cut scene after cut scene, about a solid 1/4 of my time in travel, and the remaining 1/4 actually doing something resembling action. $15/month is pretty cheap for the amount of entertainment a game like this provides, but I find it increasingly frustrating with my progression minded attitude and I feel more like I am watching a mediocre movie than playing a game. It's more enjoyable sitting in queue for dungeons and leveling botany or mining than it is going through the main story. Alas your progression is capped by the main story so you are forced to sit through mindless hours upon hours of watching your "warrior of light" function as a lemming.

If we are talking story quality alone, if they gave the scions even half the amount of backbone or determination as the evil side has, there would be no more issues. I recently had a cut scene where you first slowly defeat a garlean, he tries to escape and gets blocked by rebels (even being told there is no escape), and then after a short battle you watch him skip off into the distance right past the rebels currently performing a pincer attack on him. It's as though the side of "light" is functioning at critical thought levels equivalent to a root vegetable, and I often find myself wishing my character wasn't associated with any of them. The one leading the pincer attack was an archer for gods sake, at least fire an arrow at the enemy slowly trotting off.

If we are talking involvement in the story, it gets even more frustrating for me as a healer class, watching all these characters die or get injured as my insane levels of healing ability go to waste. I can't imagine the amount of work that would go into having seperate storylines based off your place in the mmo triad, but good god is it annoying watching a character slowly die, and gaining back control of my character to stare at a screen full of healing spells.

My biggest complaints: I just finished the level 70 scholar questline and actually enjoyed it. My only complaint is that they haven't figured out that putting the NPC's in a faux party with you as they do your chocobo companion would make way more sense and your life as a healer much easier. Though it was too bad that I was 70 before I was even allowed to begin the 60-70 content. At the rate I am going by being limited in progression by the story, I will already be 80 before I start shadowbringer content. I don't want to level 2-3 different classes in equal measure just so I can maintain some level of equality with the storyline.

The inventory system and UI is hot garbage, I especially dislike how "greed to sell" gear gets randomly mixed into your armory chest, and then makes gear you might want to use get trapped in your normal inventory which causes all sorts of other small annoyances.

Point 1. Stop playing the game like WoW. If you are not interested in reading the story and getting to know the characters and world, you will not find enjoyment. This is not a rushing game. You will miss a lot if you do so. Lots of dungeons, raids, complementory systems, gameplay types. The game shines at being a complete mmo package. It's not a wannabe e-sports mmo where all that matters is that max level power grind.

Point 2. Have you boosted your character or something? Cause otherwise you would know that you get deleveled in dungeons and raids if you are above the content.
Hey i do agree with you with the frames. But it's not like it was a big deal. A bit annoying but the quests are easy enough to not be a problem.

Point 3. You really should take the time to read all your customization options. There is a lot you can do.
I have had all gear go to my inventory so i don't clutter my gear armory. It still gets messy with all the classes but i hope to get them all maxed one day and i'll only need like 6 sets of gear.

[Puzzlesocks]

Point 1. Stop playing the game like WoW. If you are not interested in reading the story and getting to know the characters and world, you will not find enjoyment. This is not a rushing game. You will miss a lot if you do so. Lots of dungeons, raids, complementory systems, gameplay types. The game shines at being a complete mmo package. It's not a wannabe e-sports mmo where all that matters is that max level power grind.

Point 2. Have you boosted your character or something? Cause otherwise you would know that you get deleveled in dungeons and raids if you are above the content.
Hey i do agree with you with the frames. But it's not like it was a big deal. A bit annoying but the quests are easy enough to not be a problem.

Point 3. You really should take the time to read all your customization options. There is a lot you can do.
I have had all gear go to my inventory so i don't clutter my gear armory. It still gets messy with all the classes but i hope to get them all maxed one day and i'll only need like 6 sets of gear.

As far as point 1. I appreciate being able to play the game how I want to play it. This is why I enjoy games like Minecraft, which give you a set baseline, but really allow you to play the game however you desire. I don't mind short attunement quest lines as were in BC, but making it so you can't get gear or abilities suited to your level until you finish 100+ meaningless quests that deliver such a huge amount of XP that doing the normal zone quests is not worth it seems like bad design to me. Being level 70 and stuck doing dozens of level 60 quests that deliver meaningless rewards just isn't fun, but maybe that's just me. As I said, I do read a synopsis of the questline as I move through it so that I know what is going on, every now and then I even get interested and sit through a cut scene. I would just rather read what is going on in an easy 30 second to a minute than sit through 10 minutes of cut scene about (insert random character with an unnecessarily complicated name having an emotional crisis over something idiotic). That could just be my lack of emotional connection talking, but maybe I just prefer a heavier story, I do read a lot of darker topics such as the Dark Tower and Dresden Files series (imo infinitely better writing and character development than this game).

For point 2, I understand the level sync system, and actually appreciate it to a point. I don't necessarily enjoy it when you are over-leveled for quests and suddenly have abilities taken away during certain scenarios or dungeons along the quest line. I mean being a level 70 healer stuck doing Sastasha for your random dungeon for the day leaves you with like 2 abilities and your tank literally carrying the dungeon as the only class with any sort of aoe. Or even on a lesser note, such as I just unlocked the level 70 class abilities for Scholar and won't be able to use them in action for about another 110 main story-line quests in Stormblood. It is a small price to pay, but I would be surprised if there aren't many others who groan at the loss of their entire play style when they get certain dungeons. Again though, I do want to be very clear that I do appreciate being able to enjoy dungeons and raids relatively as they were done years ago.

As far as point 3, I must have missed an option that should have been baseline. I'll look into it, but I can say that at the moment with multiple classes between the levels of 1 and 70, gear is a complete mess and time consuming to sort properly. I mean honestly, it just makes more sense to use the armory specifically as a place to store gear that you are using. If nothing else, only being able to look at a single bag tab on yourself or retainer at a time is frustrating by itself. The inventory system as a whole is bad design and there is a reason there are addon's for WoW specifically to view your entire inventory at once (as well as sorting features). Ideally a feature as in GW2 would be optimal to help manage crafting materials as well. Coming back after a break and spending about an hour fixing and sorting my inventory from a crafting session was not an ideal start by any means.

Edit: Apparently there are ways to handle the inventory slightly better, why they are not baseline I would never know.

[Swnem]

As far as point 1. I appreciate being able to play the game how I want to play it. This is why I enjoy games like Minecraft, which give you a set baseline, but really allow you to play the game however you desire. I don't mind short attunement quest lines as were in BC, but making it so you can't get gear or abilities suited to your level until you finish 100+ meaningless quests that deliver such a huge amount of XP that doing the normal zone quests is not worth it seems like bad design to me. Being level 70 and stuck doing dozens of level 60 quests that deliver meaningless rewards just isn't fun, but maybe that's just me. As I said, I do read a synopsis of the questline as I move through it so that I know what is going on, every now and then I even get interested and sit through a cut scene. I would just rather read what is going on in an easy 30 second to a minute than sit through 10 minutes of cut scene about (insert random character with an unnecessarily complicated name having an emotional crisis over something idiotic). That could just be my lack of emotional connection talking, but maybe I just prefer a heavier story, I do read a lot of darker topics such as the Dark Tower and Dresden Files series (imo infinitely better writing and character development than this game).

For point 2, I understand the level sync system, and actually appreciate it to a point. I don't necessarily enjoy it when you are over-leveled for quests and suddenly have abilities taken away during certain scenarios or dungeons along the quest line. I mean being a level 70 healer stuck doing Sastasha for your random dungeon for the day leaves you with like 2 abilities and your tank literally carrying the dungeon as the only class with any sort of aoe. Or even on a lesser note, such as I just unlocked the level 70 class abilities for Scholar and won't be able to use them in action for about another 110 main story-line quests in Stormblood. It is a small price to pay, but I would be surprised if there aren't many others who groan at the loss of their entire play style when they get certain dungeons. Again though, I do want to be very clear that I do appreciate being able to enjoy dungeons and raids relatively as they were done years ago.

As far as point 3, I must have missed an option that should have been baseline. I'll look into it, but I can say that at the moment with multiple classes between the levels of 1 and 70, gear is a complete mess and time consuming to sort properly. I mean honestly, it just makes more sense to use the armory specifically as a place to store gear that you are using. If nothing else, only being able to look at a single bag tab on yourself or retainer at a time is frustrating by itself. The inventory system as a whole is bad design and there is a reason there are addon's for WoW specifically to view your entire inventory at once (as well as sorting features). Ideally a feature as in GW2 would be optimal to help manage crafting materials as well. Coming back after a break and spending about an hour fixing and sorting my inventory from a crafting session was not an ideal start by any means.

Edit: Apparently there are ways to handle the inventory slightly better, why they are not baseline I would never know.

Ok, so to 1, i can tell you the devs announced they will be slimming the 100 quest post ARR chain, cause everyone can agree that is too badly paced. Post HW, wich you mentioned, that is the Dragon war and tbh with you i find the post main quest stories to be better paced than the main stories. With that said, you don't very much care about the story and only got the gist of it. That is the main problem for you, i believe. It might be hopeless but i recommend you try fun side activities like the gold saucer. Eureka is also a game within a game. Very original FFXI. But hey, it's up to you how you want to play, but i did recognise how the way of playing mmo's i got from WoW ended up being a detriment in this game. I enjoy it a lot more reading the story and progressing several systems as i progress in the story. I particularly like the gold saucer stuff, grand company stuff and hunting. Saucer is only for my goal of getting the fenrir mount, but unlocking a decent triad deck lets me get easy MGP weekly, and chocobo racing and lord are nice distractions. The GATE's are good fun.

The GC gives you a lot of useful stuff though. Faster riding speed in the ARR zones, a coupon you can use to not pay for your teleports per use, items that increase your xp gains, gear for all jobs, minions, decoration, etc. You got a whole team of NPC's you can build and send in missions to fetch stuff and level up or go with them into dungeons yourself, being a great way to level up alt jobs i've been really enjoying.
And i hardly touched Eureka cause i want to get to know my FC members and maybe get a group going. AKA there's a lot you are skipping that is relevant. Most don't even know what they are missing exactly cause they play it like WoW and end up quitting never getting what is amazing about the game.

Point 2, i do agree. But it is the price to pay for the difficulty. I tend to only use the up to level 50 roulette on lower level jobs cause of that.

Point 3. You can indeed also display your 4 bags as a single panel. But i agree that retainers are unecessarely cumbersome to acess. Lots of prompts. They do have added bonuses though, cause they also can be leveled up and made to fetch goodies that will help you with your crafting jobs or if you want to sell a specific item in the markets. The bank portion of them, leaves something to be desired and i do wish it was quicker and easier to acess.
Might be worth mentioning they make it easy to clean my inventory once i got everything sent to it. Dunno if you noticed but you can right click from your inventory when you tell them to sell stuff from your inventory and you can easily put up an auction and check the prices on the market without having to search it before hand. Also, you can have your stuff sold with your retainer like you would vendor to a merchant too. It's an option when you right click.
So, yeah, acessing their bank is cumbersome but they are really handy at the rest compared to other mmo's where you have to do it manually.

AKA dude, the game is not perfect. It has it's quirks. But neither is WoW or any other. But, for me it's a way more complete package and much better at actually being an engrossing mmo with a variety of things to do. When one plays it like WoW, like i did for a good time, i feel makes it difficult to find the enjoyment. Cause WoW has nothing but the end-game power grind, FFXIV has so much more. They lock you in the MSQ cause they want you to experience the journey and enioy it. Not like WoW where we just skip all that old stuff cause it's not relevant anymore and that's what the devs want. All those old systems added when they were recent content that then got gutted to be useless. Everything is destroyed in WoW in favor of the end game power grind. This i see now that i play FFXIV. It's been enlightning.
Also compare how much FF has now in terms of content compared to WoW a twice as old game and you might realise how i did, how wasteful WoW is.

Even your feeling that you should just choose one job and stick to it comes from arbitrary design limitations put on us from other mmo's design. You should embrace what this mmo is, you will like it more, i think. You can keep playing it like WoW and conclude it's worse at doing what WoW does. It might be, though it depends on pov, but it's much better at doing everything else and overall a much better game cause it exactly does more than limiting itself to emulate what wow does.

[Puzzlesocks]

Ok, so to 1, i can tell you the devs announced they will be slimming the 100 quest post ARR chain, cause everyone can agree that is too badly paced. Post HW, wich you mentioned, that is the Dragon war and tbh with you i find the post main quest stories to be better paced than the main stories. With that said, you don't very much care about the story and only got the gist of it. That is the main problem for you, i believe. It might be hopeless but i recommend you try fun side activities like the gold saucer. Eureka is also a game within a game. Very original FFXI. But hey, it's up to you how you want to play, but i did recognise how the way of playing mmo's i got from WoW ended up being a detriment in this game. I enjoy it a lot more reading the story and progressing several systems as i progress in the story. I particularly like the gold saucer stuff, grand company stuff and hunting. Saucer is only for my goal of getting the fenrir mount, but unlocking a decent triad deck lets me get easy MGP weekly, and chocobo racing and lord are nice distractions. The GATE's are good fun.

The GC gives you a lot of useful stuff though. Faster riding speed in the ARR zones, a coupon you can use to not pay for your teleports per use, items that increase your xp gains, gear for all jobs, minions, decoration, etc. You got a whole team of NPC's you can build and send in missions to fetch stuff and level up or go with them into dungeons yourself, being a great way to level up alt jobs i've been really enjoying.
And i hardly touched Eureka cause i want to get to know my FC members and maybe get a group going. AKA there's a lot you are skipping that is relevant. Most don't even know what they are missing exactly cause they play it like WoW and end up quitting never getting what is amazing about the game.

You are assuming I don't do the other things. I've basically completed the the Flames Grand Company. I did play around a little bit at the gold saucer, and may look into doing a bit more there sometime, though honestly Triple Triad is not for me. I will play the card games in their multiple series that have them just for rewards, but I don't necessarily enjoy them and find many of the random rule sets incredibly frustrating and unfair at times. Luckily in this game there is nothing of value to be gained by triad, unlike FF8 and FF9 where you could benefit greatly by playing. I also spent some time to unlock and attempt hard/extreme/savage modes for most the dungeons so far, because as a healer, the thing I enjoy most in a game is supporting groups. Questing endlessly as a healer is not necessarily my idea of a great time.

Point 2, i do agree. But it is the price to pay for the difficulty. I tend to only use the up to level 50 roulette on lower level jobs cause of that.

This is exactly how I have been treating it. I wish there was a better way (such as ability scaling), but I understand the cost/benefit of messing with that and understand their choice is easier to balance, takes less development time, and is more true to the content itself.

Point 3. You can indeed also display your 4 bags as a single panel. But i agree that retainers are unecessarely cumbersome to acess. Lots of prompts. They do have added bonuses though, cause they also can be leveled up and made to fetch goodies that will help you with your crafting jobs or if you want to sell a specific item in the markets. The bank portion of them, leaves something to be desired and i do wish it was quicker and easier to acess.
Might be worth mentioning they make it easy to clean my inventory once i got everything sent to it. Dunno if you noticed but you can right click from your inventory when you tell them to sell stuff from your inventory and you can easily put up an auction and check the prices on the market without having to search it before hand. Also, you can have your stuff sold with your retainer like you would vendor to a merchant too. It's an option when you right click.
So, yeah, acessing their bank is cumbersome but they are really handy at the rest compared to other mmo's where you have to do it manually.

Inventory stuff, they could do with a better in game tutorial by far. After figuring out how to handle and manage the inventory, it became a HUGE weight off my dislike of the game. This is my third time returning to the game (played beta and some release, returned a bit for stormblood, and now for shadowbringers). I obviously enjoy the game enough to return to it, but constantly get pushed off by little annoyances that build up and make me want to take a break. Keep in mind that I have logged conservatively 500-650 active hours in the game, and it took me until yesterday to find out how to manage and sort the inventory properly. When I talked to my FC about it, there were at least 4 other people who have been playing for months/years that also had no idea about inventory management. It isn't well explained and is a huge hindrance to enjoying the game properly.

AKA dude, the game is not perfect. It has it's quirks. But neither is WoW or any other. But, for me it's a way more complete package and much better at actually being an engrossing mmo with a variety of things to do. When one plays it like WoW, like i did for a good time, i feel makes it difficult to find the enjoyment. Cause WoW has nothing but the end-game power grind, FFXIV has so much more. They lock you in the MSQ cause they want you to experience the journey and enioy it. Not like WoW where we just skip all that old stuff cause it's not relevant anymore and that's what the devs want. All those old systems added when they were recent content that then got gutted to be useless. Everything is destroyed in WoW in favor of the end game power grind. This i see now that i play FFXIV. It's been enlightning.
Also compare how much FF has now in terms of content compared to WoW a twice as old game and you might realise how i did, how wasteful WoW is.

Even your feeling that you should just choose one job and stick to it comes from arbitrary design limitations put on us from other mmo's design. You should embrace what this mmo is, you will like it more, i think. You can keep playing it like WoW and conclude it's worse at doing what WoW does. It might be, though it depends on pov, but it's much better at doing everything else and overall a much better game cause it exactly does more than limiting itself to emulate what wow does.

Once again, I feel that you are misjudging my opinion and how I play the game. I actually never compared this game to WoW because they function so radically different. There is very little in common between the 2 games, and I haven't played WoW seriously in ages. I don't think having a problem with being locked into a story that I don't necessarily enjoy is an invalid complaint, especially when said story is dozens if not hundreds of in game hours long. I would compare it to being forced to read a book for class in order to gain the credits. I will do it, but I don't have to enjoy a sappy romance novel if I generally read fantasy/horror. In the case of this games story, so far it (usually) lacks action or subjects I can relate to. The characters are overblown and white knighted, and my character is about as intelligent as a potato. Again, this could just be a problem with my personality or reading preferences, but by no means does anyone have the right to tell another person that they are wrong when it comes to something like personal enjoyment.

[Swnem]

You are assuming I don't do the other things. I've basically completed the the Flames Grand Company. I did play around a little bit at the gold saucer, and may look into doing a bit more there sometime, though honestly Triple Triad is not for me. I will play the card games in their multiple series that have them just for rewards, but I don't necessarily enjoy them and find many of the random rule sets incredibly frustrating and unfair at times. Luckily in this game there is nothing of value to be gained by triad, unlike FF8 and FF9 where you could benefit greatly by playing. I also spent some time to unlock and attempt hard/extreme/savage modes for most the dungeons so far, because as a healer, the thing I enjoy most in a game is supporting groups. Questing endlessly as a healer is not necessarily my idea of a great time.


This is exactly how I have been treating it. I wish there was a better way (such as ability scaling), but I understand the cost/benefit of messing with that and understand their choice is easier to balance, takes less development time, and is more true to the content itself.


Inventory stuff, they could do with a better in game tutorial by far. After figuring out how to handle and manage the inventory, it became a HUGE weight off my dislike of the game. This is my third time returning to the game (played beta and some release, returned a bit for stormblood, and now for shadowbringers). I obviously enjoy the game enough to return to it, but constantly get pushed off by little annoyances that build up and make me want to take a break. Keep in mind that I have logged conservatively 500-650 active hours in the game, and it took me until yesterday to find out how to manage and sort the inventory properly. When I talked to my FC about it, there were at least 4 other people who have been playing for months/years that also had no idea about inventory management. It isn't well explained and is a huge hindrance to enjoying the game properly.



Once again, I feel that you are misjudging my opinion and how I play the game. I actually never compared this game to WoW because they function so radically different. There is very little in common between the 2 games, and I haven't played WoW seriously in ages. I don't think having a problem with being locked into a story that I don't necessarily enjoy is an invalid complaint, especially when said story is dozens if not hundreds of in game hours long. I would compare it to being forced to read a book for class in order to gain the credits. I will do it, but I don't have to enjoy a sappy romance novel if I generally read fantasy/horror. In the case of this games story, so far it (usually) lacks action or subjects I can relate to. The characters are overblown and white knighted, and my character is about as intelligent as a potato. Again, this could just be a problem with my personality or reading preferences, but by no means does anyone have the right to tell another person that they are wrong when it comes to something like personal enjoyment.

Not saying you are wrong at all. Was just saying i was in a similar place and found more enjoyment when i turned my stance on how i was playing the game around.
End of the day, it is very much a JRPG story. I can understand it's not for everyone. But, it's not bad. Honestly though, western mmo's do cartoony story's themselves, so it's not really fair to compare it to movies or books whose story is the sole purpose.
I do wish my character was voiced though. I'm secretely hoping that is one of the shadowbringers twists haha.

[Helenius]

I managed to finish the MSQ, then stopped playing. Maybe I will get back to it, but having like 20+ days played just to finish the MSQ lol... (Also did some leveling on other professions)

[Katchii]

I managed to finish the MSQ, then stopped playing. Maybe I will get back to it, but having like 20+ days played just to finish the MSQ lol... (Also did some leveling on other professions)

I understand the mentality, this game isn't for everyone, but this game IS designed as very story heavy. And it doesn't take 20+ days played to finish the MSQ, it takes a while...but not 480 hours played. I'd say 100-120 hours if you watch and read everything and do a few unlocks of side content along the way. That's significantly reduced if you skip cut scenes and don't read a lot of the dialogue. That's still a LOT of hours, not denying that, but 20+ days played is a huge exaggeration.

[Puremallace]

That would be cause there is in fact something you skipped, as many of us did. The original FFXIV where the characters come from.
But, with new game+ coming, you can replay the story mode with your newfound knowledge in the future.
I am planning to replay Stormblood myself cause i skipped a good portion and in retrospect i would like to have read it.

I am trying not to skip but they have cut scenes for simple go gather X quest which seems silly. The cut scenes in the dungeons seem like they annoy other people who have done them but waiting on me to finish watch mine. Think it is called Thousand Maws that was like 1-2min before a boss fight where I was watching the cut scene before the end boss because it was FREAKING cool but a guy was going off in party chat because he thought like 3 of us had AFKd lol

They just seem like they are placed in strange places and players cannot trigger them by talking to an NPC but play automatically.

[Swnem]

I am trying not to skip but they have cut scenes for simple go gather X quest which seems silly. The cut scenes in the dungeons seem like they annoy other people who have done them but waiting on me to finish watch mine. Think it is called Thousand Maws that was like 1-2min before a boss fight where I was watching the cut scene before the end boss because it was FREAKING cool but a guy was going off in party chat because he thought like 3 of us had AFKd lol

They just seem like they are placed in strange places and players cannot trigger them by talking to an NPC but play automatically.

There is a symbol on top of your character head when you are watching a cut-scene. So, he knew or he was a new player. Also i believe kicking people cause they are watching a cut-scene is against the rules and people can get punished for it.
When there is a new player in the dungeon group, everyone gets 100 tomes extra. So, that is to off-set any upsetting it might cause. People just have to be understanding.

[SkyTides]

For me the 2.0 MSQ was a complete jumble..This was my first FF game and I found the story mostly quite boring and long-winded. Heavensward was great, I got really invested in certain characters and of course Dragons
Stormblood for me started out and ended great but most of the middle of 5.0 and some of the patch content was a bit of a drag. I haven't hit max level in shadowbringers yet but I'm enjoying it so far.
While the story is pretty good (excellent in places), its not always delivered in the most interesting way that would appeal to most people. Maybe its a japanese RPG thing, but if there was a bit of pruning on the 'stand around talking' scenes, and more build up and tension I think the story would be more appealing. There are some really good story arcs, which can sometimes be broken up by menial boring tasks which ruins the flow. I'd also like to see a shakeup of the 'travel to each zone, help and befriend the locals, get their help with the big baddie' formula. It works gameplay-wise but its getting a bit old.

[kaelleria]

I think part of the issue people have with the MSQ is that it can be very uneven... There's a lot of storylines they expand upon in post expansion content that are more interesting than the X.0 storylines.

For example in SB I couldn't make myself care about Doma at all until post 70 or in ShB it is really good up until

Spoiler: 

They rushed Emet-Selch's conclusion... I expect they'll be expanding on this in 5.x storylines

[Dartz1979]

I like the story only part i get upset is when my favorite final fantasy women get killed

[Aehl]

Thread: The story isn't that good

Having just finished Shadowbringers MSQ, all I can say is that it leaves all the others for DEAD. Blown away by brilliance, emotive stories and a heartrending end.

Hades was a..hellish fight (Yes I went there....) the ending cinematic was...incredible. Gratifying to feel it had all been worth it. Every single moment. No spoilers.

BFA by comparison is utterly laughable.