[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I really can't wait for MMO's to embrace user generated content. I'll give you an example I've given countless times before. Chocobo Racing is an abomination in this game. Literally all they had to do was copy Mario Kart/CTR with FF universe flair (boxes with Materia, summons, magic, etc.) and it'd be the greatest thing ever. Shit I'd buy it as a standalone game. Give us single player time trials (think CTR relics), single player campaign (yes with story!), and PVP. Then give us a map editor mode. Make it strict on what you can do, but allow people to create PVP tracks, time trial tracks, hell if you can find a way to let us create story driven adventures do it too (think old UMS from Starcraft). Then let us gamble against fellow FC/LS mates, etc. Let us SPECTATE other peoples races, etc. Then I would have hid the entire chocobo dying system, and tons of subsets of chocobo gear behind this.

This allows people OF ALL TYPES to enjoy the content and progress and if they get bored of the premade stuff, they can PVP or build their own content, AS WELL as content other people built.

Sadly, player created content in MMOs has had a rocky history.

Star Trek Online famously had a map editor (called The Foundry), where players had access to developer tools and could create their own maps, missions, minigames, whatever. The Foundry was considered the true endgame after completing all vanilla content, and it was very popular. Unfortunately, the programmers who originally developed STO are gone, so no one at Cryptic today really knows how the code works, and that was causing problems for development. Thus, last year, Cryptic made the decision to shut down the Foundry (old maps will remain but you can't create anything new).

Lego Universe gave every player plots of land that they could build on, and allowed them to script their stuff on the plots. This led to players creating elaborate levels, missions, and minigames. Unfortunately, the game was mismanaged (what with Lego trying to get parents to buy a monthly subscription for their kids to play, shutting out most younger players, and the game's limited communication and nonexistent endgame, which shut out most older players), and apparently the feature was very expensive, as Lego had a team whose only job was to go into people's plots and verify that there weren't dicks or anything. The game shut down a year after it launched.

Peria Chronicles was going to have a map editor and allow players to script stuff in their levels, but the game spent a decade in development hell, was rebooted several times, and was finally cancelled last year.

[Rogalicus]

Sadly, player created content in MMOs has had a rocky history.

Star Trek Online famously had a map editor (called The Foundry), where players had access to developer tools and could create their own maps, missions, minigames, whatever. The Foundry was considered the true endgame after completing all vanilla content, and it was very popular. Unfortunately, the programmers who originally developed STO are gone, so no one at Cryptic today really knows how the code works, and that was causing problems for development. Thus, last year, Cryptic made the decision to shut down the Foundry (old maps will remain but you can't create anything new).

Lego Universe gave every player plots of land that they could build on, and allowed them to script their stuff on the plots. This led to players creating elaborate levels, missions, and minigames. Unfortunately, the game was mismanaged (what with Lego trying to get parents to buy a monthly subscription for their kids to play, shutting out most younger players, and the game's limited communication and nonexistent endgame, which shut out most older players), and apparently the feature was very expensive, as Lego had a team whose only job was to go into people's plots and verify that there weren't dicks or anything. The game shut down a year after it launched.

Peria Chronicles was going to have a map editor and allow players to script stuff in their levels, but the game spent a decade in development hell, was rebooted several times, and was finally cancelled last year.

Adding to that, City of Heroes had player missions and EQ2 had player dungeons. Both ended up being exploited heavily as fast leveling system where most players upvoted long corridors full of weak trash instead of more elaborate works.

[Granyala]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/woman-yelling-at-a-cat

Okay, thanks for explaining, I still don't get the "funny" part.

[Aoyi]

Few notes:

1) There is not a patch with actual content every 3 weeks.
2) FF14 does have a lot of content, but a lot of it is either dead, boring, or we've done it 1000x already and don't ever want to see it again. Genuinely interesting or well developed content is few and far between (stuff like MSQ, raids, etc.).
3) Each class has their own stories up until the current expansion, in which it turns to roles only.

I'd be curious how much you've been playing because 9 months is a very long time for anyone to play in an invested fashion, but if you were just casually playing 4 hours a week I would agree with you.

There has been content every few weeks. No, its not raid or trial content, but it has been content. Whether its holiday storylines, Blue Mage update, Firmament, Copied Factory, etc. they have had a steady flow of content. Whether its something that interests you or not is a different story, but there has been something happening every 3-4 weeks.

I play almost every day for a couple hours a day. I have 18 classes at max level with their stories complete. I'm currently leveling bard and doing the stories from zones that still haven't been completed. There are a LOT of quests in this game. I'm not the type of person to just blindly click on things and run to objectives.

Final Fantasy has stories to tell, so I'm going to read as I go through the game to enjoy the work the writers put into it. Some stories are stronger than others, of course, but sometimes its nice to do a ridiculous side story every now and then to take your mind off some of the really dark stuff in FFXIV.

[Granyala]

I'm the same way. But as the story goes forward and new things are introduced with new dungeons and enemies etc... getting more powerful to take on those new threats feels good and rewarding IMO.

Yeah, once you finished the last story dungeon and all you have is grinding to try and get BiS to take on the higher versions of what you've already done it's boring.

Uuh... hate to break it to you but I don't exchange on piece of gear until I hit the new level cap of a given expansion. Content is just too easy as a healer to really care, I always chuckle when I see people wasting time farming equipment during leveling.

It's a bit different when you are really starting out, ARR forces you to keep an eye on your gear until you are Lv 50 and the poetics start coming in by freight container.
After that it's buy a set per expansion and you are good to go.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Everyone talks as if they think that Yoshi planned out the entire story from 1.0 to now or something, when he's been pretty clear about them coming up with new stuff as they went along.

The broad strokes are there, of course. And they do a good job tying it all together as they go, but it absolutely hasn't been a straight plan from beginning to end.

(long post about mega stories in games)

Spoiler: 

Did anyone claim that everything was planned out? It's evident from the material ingame that there is a plan for the overall story of Hydaelyn/Zodiark/WoL/Ascians. They're doing it the same way the Trails saga was planned out: they have the overall story but they fill out the short term storylines as they get to them. There have been only a handful of retcons for the 2.0-5.0 story. Most of the retcons have been trying to reconcile the 1.0 lore with the current direction of the story.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing I really like about FFXIV's storytelling is that we are actually getting to the ending in a timely manner. The plot as advanced significantly with Shadowbringers, and it feels like 6.0 could be the ending. Contrast that with Trails, which has been in comparison more messy. SC didn't even have a proper ending, so a third Sky game had to be created just to give closure to SC. Then, rather than heading to the Empire, the saga then got derailed by two filler games (*cough* Crossbell *cough*) which turned out to be pointless in the grand scheme of things. Not only that, due to a lack of foresight, Crossbell couldn't get a proper ending, and since they had set up their fans to expect closure to it, a significant chunk of the Empire arc was bogged down in addressing Crossbell. Now, we are in a situation where, rather than heading to the next plot point, we are instead getting yet ANOTHER FILLER game that is meant to address the problems created by the filler arc. By Kondo's own admission, we still have at least THREE ARCS left before we reach the end of the saga, and that's not counting if we get even more filler games. At this rate, we'll be lucky if we reach the end of the Trails saga before 2030.

(On that note, it's very fortunate that Shadowbringers didn't turn out to be a filler expansion like WoD. MoP was clearly setting up Legion as the next expansion - the developers even confirm that was the plan at Blizzcon - but since Blizzard wanted to capitalize on the Warcraft movie hype, we got WoD, which managed to screw everything up while simultaneously being a pointless filler arc).

FFXIV has done a great job keeping expansion arcs contained. Sure, the Ul'dah coup was aborted in an unsatisfying matter, but we don't have any growing plot tumors bogging the story down. So far, the only expansion plotline that wasn't wrapped up in the expansion it began in is Zenos, who seems to be more relevant to the saga as a whole rather than that one storyline.

- - - Updated - - -

The only other long running game story I can think of is Guild Wars 2, which managed to have a satisfying ending but required a few changes to get there. GW2's story was about six dragons (which are more akin to incomprehensible, lovecraftian horrors) who were going to wake up and destroy the world. The main protagonists are an adventurer's guild that broke down after an attempt to kill one of those dragons, Kralkatorik, ended with one of their members dying. The story of GW2 is about going around, putting the band back together to kill the dragons, with the end goal of killing Kralkatorik. After the first expansion, the team realized that if they tried to give every dragon their own expansion, the main story about the guild would take too long, so the remaining dragons were quietly written out of the story (they just don't wake up) and the story marches onward towards resolving the end. We got a very satisfying ending to the GW2 saga last year. We're still getting new storylines, but the overarching mega plot is over.

- - - Updated - - -

Fortunately, whoever is managing the Ascian storyline didn't overscope it. It very easily could have turned into "you have to kill each of the 13 Ascians one by one", but Shadowbringers neatly avoided that by just having 3 head honcho Ascians who raise the others up, so we all we have left is to deal with Elidibus (no more Ascians after he is dead) and Zodiark, and possibly the Sound that caused the Terminus. We don't need an entire Garlemald expansion (though it'd be cool to visit it), or need to liberate every single province. We just need to get take out Zodiark and save the planet, and we will get there within the next few years. (god forbid if we had to go to every other shard, holy crap I'm so glad they're not going to drag this saga out)

Anyway, I am very satisfied with FFXIV's mega plot. A lot of people seem to think Stormblood was the worst thing ever, but at least 4.0 was short and we still got a lot of plot progression, and I found it very entertaining all the way through. The overall story has been really tight.

[Hyral]

I'd honestly enjoy something like WoW's World Quests in this game, something you could do and just zoom-zoom from objective to objective (just like in WoW). I like to think that Stormblood's Eureka is pretty close to this but it's sadly previous expansion's content, yesterday's news.

I mean that's FATEs. At least that's pretty much how they feel to me. And imo better since with gemstones you can actually steadily work towards a specific reward you want instead of all just being RNG. They are still as much of a grind as WQs and only really mentioning them since you say you like that type of content.

If you want a reason to just explore there's always the Sightseeing Log. If you look up a guide and just go to the points to get them it'll be boring but then everything is boring if you are just mimicking a guide like a monkey. I've had fun looking around as I travel to places or checking out curious sections of the map in case there's some sightseeing points there. Could even do that while doing FATEs.

Another thing I find myself getting lost in often is Triple Triad. Been slowly working up a collection and there's tons of NPCs in the world to get cards from. If you've played FFVIII you know exactly how much time this can consume.

Crafting and gathering also gets you out in the world and imo crafting collectibles and high level stuff can be fun if you don't just end up getting a guide and macro online. But you said you don't like that.

Lastly there's BLU. The job is basically a mini game designed to get you fighting mobs in the world looking for new spells to learn. And now they have access to Heavensward stuff so might be a new way of also doing old duty content with a new spin.

If you are looking for the WoW experience of just endless grinds to supplement a raid-or-die design you won't find that here. I'd say here the end-game is what you make it, for better or worse.

[Rogalicus]

so the remaining dragons were quietly written out of the story (they just don't wake up) and the story marches onward towards resolving the end. We got a very satisfying ending to the GW2 saga last year. We're still getting new storylines, but the overarching mega plot is over.

That's factually wrong, there just wasn't traditional tie-in in the end of LWS4. After subtle hints from random NPC during Dragon Bash and deceptively calm prologue episode of new season we go on to fight Jormag.

[Gizen]

Fortunately, whoever is managing the Ascian storyline didn't overscope it. It very easily could have turned into "you have to kill each of the 13 Ascians one by one", but Shadowbringers neatly avoided that by just having 3 head honcho Ascians who raise the others up, so we all we have left is to deal with Elidibus (no more Ascians after he is dead) and Zodiark, and possibly the Sound that caused the Terminus.

One thing I think is noteworthy/interesting is, while Shadowbringers establishes only 3 of the 13 Ascians actually matter, we are still kind of on the path to killing all 13 of them... but the story isn't making us kill them all personally. As part of the main story we've deal with 4 of them (Lahabrea, Igeyorm, Nabriales, and Emet-Selch), but at least 3 more of them have been confirmed killed off screen. The events of Shadowbringers itself were essentially caused by the off screen deaths of two Asciants (Mitron and Lohgrif) which caused the Flood of Light in the first place, and another one (Emmerololth) died off screen as part of the backstory for the Eureka questline in Stormblood. So I actually wouldn't be surprised if the story does ultimately result in all 13 having to be dealt with, though the story has now clearly set itself up to have some of the remaining ones be minor threats rather than major expansion antagonists.

[Granyala]

If you want a reason to just explore there's always the Sightseeing Log. If you look up a guide and just go to the points to get them it'll be boring but then everything is boring if you are just mimicking a guide like a monkey. I've had fun looking around as I travel to places or checking out curious sections of the map in case there's some sightseeing points there.

If sth. on the map looks interesting, I go/fly there. I don't need "sight seeing logs" or dumb rubber points in order to be "motivated".
On the contrary, I hate searching for these things, so I always use a guide to get them out of the way when the expansion is coming to a close. Typically I find around half of them w/o searching while playing the game.

To me, exploration is sth that has to happen naturally. Forcing it via some artificial survey counter like e.g.: Xenoblade Chornicles X does, does not work for me at all. It takes the fun out of it and makes it a chore.

[Katchii]

Uuh... hate to break it to you but I don't exchange on piece of gear until I hit the new level cap of a given expansion. Content is just too easy as a healer to really care, I always chuckle when I see people wasting time farming equipment during leveling.

It's a bit different when you are really starting out, ARR forces you to keep an eye on your gear until you are Lv 50 and the poetics start coming in by freight container.
After that it's buy a set per expansion and you are good to go.

To each their own I guess then. I enjoy getting new pieces of gear as I'm leveling and exchanging them and getting more powerful. It being necessary to complete the content is irrelevant to me. I don't necessarily go out of my way to farm them, unless I just really like the set for glamour purposes, but I play and level every class so as I'm leveling my alt classes I'm gathering the sets through the dungeons anyway.

At this point in the expansion, I have pretty much every full dungeon set for every role. Being able to switch to it feel good. As a tank it's almost necessary, as DPS I'd think you'd just WANT to because of the increase in damage. As a healer, I'd agree that as long as you're able to successfully complete the content there's nothing pushing you to get better gear.

Healers are kind of the exception here though. Still feels good to me to change my gear and know I'm more powerful, but I understand why that would just be tedious to other people.

[lollerlaban]

Uuh... hate to break it to you but I don't exchange on piece of gear until I hit the new level cap of a given expansion. Content is just too easy as a healer to really care, I always chuckle when I see people wasting time farming equipment during leveling.

It's a bit different when you are really starting out, ARR forces you to keep an eye on your gear until you are Lv 50 and the poetics start coming in by freight container.
After that it's buy a set per expansion and you are good to go.

Nevermind the fact that the MSQ gives pieces while you did them in this expansion

[Granyala]

As a tank it's almost necessary

Naah. Upgraded tome gear is just fine, even in the Lv x8 dungeon of the following expansion.

Obviously you can't mass pull, but that rarely works in leveling dungeons anyway, because contrary to expert, mobs hit like trucks (even in good gear).

It's a must to equip new gear every 10 levels though. A tank with Lv 20 gear in a level 40 dungeon? Yeah... I can drag them through thanks to ARR content nerfs but it is a pain. Back in the day? Not a chance. I still remember aborted brayflox normal runs because the tank was basically instagib.

Which brings me back to my initial point: new gear is only fun if the content demands it.

- - - Updated - - -

I usually just sold those pieces depending on which gear pieces were used for leve turnins. Early in the expansion they were worth a fair chunk, and you hit max level fast and easy anyway, so eh.

*whistles innocently and puts on cute Nopon face*

MEH! Gil > DPS.

- - - Updated - - -

But come on, it was such a forced pain in the ass.

Hmm not really. I basically leveled my Sylvari that way and got the mats for my orange gear.
It was fun but then again, the world was utterly beautiful and invited you to explore beyond any sort of reward. One of the few things I remember about GW2.
Only thing I disliked were the jumping puzzles. These just don't feel good in a game with network based latency.

[Hyral]

If sth. on the map looks interesting, I go/fly there. I don't need "sight seeing logs" or dumb rubber points in order to be "motivated".
On the contrary, I hate searching for these things, so I always use a guide to get them out of the way when the expansion is coming to a close. Typically I find around half of them w/o searching while playing the game.

To me, exploration is sth that has to happen naturally. Forcing it via some artificial survey counter like e.g.: Xenoblade Chornicles X does, does not work for me at all. It takes the fun out of it and makes it a chore.

Ow, alright, well glad you have your own way to have fun in video games! I already enjoy exploring interesting environments with no incentive, and don't think having an optional log for it detracts at all from the game. To each their own.

[Katchii]

Naah. Upgraded tome gear is just fine, even in the Lv x8 dungeon of the following expansion.

Obviously you can't mass pull, but that rarely works in leveling dungeons anyway, because contrary to expert, mobs hit like trucks (even in good gear).

It's a must to equip new gear every 10 levels though. A tank with Lv 20 gear in a level 40 dungeon? Yeah... I can drag them through thanks to ARR content nerfs but it is a pain. Back in the day? Not a chance. I still remember aborted brayflox normal runs because the tank was basically instagib.

Which brings me back to my initial point: new gear is only fun if the content demands it.

I guess I've never really paid much attention to what the content demands then. I can't wrap my head around purposely going into dungeons with gear several levels behind...but then again, I level my alts pretty quickly so it's not like I ever have a chance to do it that way.

Fair points.

[Granyala]

I guess I've never really paid much attention to what the content demands then.

That's the core of the problem though: Content demands NOTHING of the player in terms of skill.
Which is why 95% of this games population is grossly incompetent and starts running into serious problems when a raid (e.g. 24man raid) suddenly requires them to move correctly or, heaven forbid, do proper DPS. Do you remember Vishap from that Bridge encounter at the end of ARR? I've NEVER had a group that managed to click the 2 yellow crystals, despite me explaining it every friggin time. Yes, people are that incompetent/ignorant. Only solution: overgear the crap out of it/wait for nerfs.

Instead of presenting a gentle learning curve, leading up to ex/savage difficulty, all content below that is "Are you a warm body? Don't worry, you're going to win. Just keep breathing." and then suddenly players are presented with a brick wall once they venture into savage/ex.

IMHO: that is crap game design and it also devalues all content. I can understand why they do it though, they expect 4 randomly thrown together people to solve the dungeon with a very high success rate and preferably w/o the need for any communication. Yeah, they have no choice but to make everything braindead easy.

[Graeham]

Well, I succeeded at getting all my crafter jobs to level 80! That should help me out with the Ishgard stuff in 5.2.

I've four more battle jobs to get to 80 before I unlock the Amaro mount, which will be one of my next goals to aim for.

[dope_danny]

I was talking to some friends about the game and the upcoming 'ARR filler quest nerf' and the most obvious example is just removing all the pre titan costa del sol horseshit but could you imagine if they did something as extreme as "main story roullette is just ultimate weapon, lahabrea and the crysalis fight" or something?

[Graeham]

The banquet stuff will probably be trimmed down to just involve running Brayflox's Longstop.

[Granyala]

And yet, you'll still find people who go batshit over the thought of some tank in level 63 gear doing a level 68 dungeon. (This topic came up SO OFTEN in the Exodus discord. You'd think it's absurd, but nope. Constant discussion of it.)

That's one of the things about gear-based MMOs that always drives me away in the end. All people can see is gear gear gear. Every member in a run has to be categorized as a "carry" or "carrier" by people just based on stats, even if there's not a large gap or if someone with less gear even outperforms others.

Uhuh, never encountered that in FF or in WoW. Probably because I surrounded myself with sensible people and rarely ran content with randoms (in WoW).
In FF, people don't seem to give a shit, though typically I am the undergeared tank. Dungeons run smootly either way b/c I know what I can handle.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I succeeded at getting all my crafter jobs to level 80! That should help me out with the Ishgard stuff in 5.2.

Grats, the Ishgard grind is a wee little to intense for my taste, esp the gathering part.
Good that the rewards are not interesting.