The story isn't that good

[Florena]

For me I like it for two reasons.

1. The first 'act' of the story ending with the first dungeon did a good job of setting up the world and sense of hopelessness, and then finally restoring a bit of hope by defeating the first Lightwarden. I like this part of the story.

2. Emet-Selch and the final msq zone.

3. Okay a third thing, Arbert. I loved all the scenes with him.

These two things help prop it up. I do think the story drags down some between these two points.

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Oh and also, part of is because SB's msq was....worse. I thought 4.0 was very disapointing, and while I liked 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 made me want to gag. So even just having a solid/decent story is an upgrade over Stormblood.

[Katchii]

Not sure if it was a typo, but the Story is kinda "meh" at best and recognized as such by most people up until Shadowbringers. Stormblood was not that great to me and the oversaturation of eastern themes got old rather quickly in Stormblood.

Biggest issue for me is the MSQ has a lot of filler stuff that exists just to have something and doesn't feel like it's telling a story at all. Just long grindy MSQ 'stuff' occasionally interspersed with some storytelling. Shadowbringers did it a lot better and genuinely feel Shadowbringers may be one of the best if not best story I've seen told in a MMORPG.

I think the story in all the parts of the game is good, for the most part. Even ARR is a good story, but it's just so filled with filler and incredibly slow at times that it makes it difficult to enjoy. It's like trying to enjoy a scenic drive in a slow, smelly, rickety car at times. Heavensward got better at the pacing and presentation, Stormblood got even better at it and Shadowbringers is practically perfection IMO.

Whether you like the stories in each instance is a somewhat separate discussion.

The ARR story was a great world building story, but it was certainly disjointed and sometimes didn't feel like it knew where it was going, so it wasn't well told.

Heavensward felt far more cohesive and epic in scope and in how it was told. You truly felt like you were on an adventure, and the pacing was well done.

Stormblood had fantastic pacing IMO, but because of the two separate locales it too felt somewhat disjointed but purposefully so. Like a book switching back and forth between characters in the chapters. After the high fantasy and epic story of Heavensward though, the almost entirely political story didn't feel as satisfying especially since our existence as the Warrior of Light isn't rooted in anything political to begin with so we felt kind of stuffed into a story that really didn't have anything to do with us.

Shadowbringers goes back to what I feel are the roots of the game as a whole, takes on an amazing adventure along side our companions, tells an amazing story that builds even further on the world as we know it and takes some things and turns them on their head. It's also incredibly well paced, includes a sense of urgency, has amazing visuals and music to push the story even further. It's not groundbreaking in the story it tells, and it's not some new trope or innovative in the story itself, but the entire package is so well done, it makes it an incredible experience.

That's why I feel Shadowbringers is so amazing, not because the story is anything hugely innovative or game changing in the world of storytelling, but because the journey through it is so entertaining, immersive, well paced, etc... It's so polished and well put together it made it an absolute joy to experience.

[Swnem]

Never played FF14, but I can tell you why MMO stories generally suck to me.

If an MMO tells the story like I'm someone special, it's lying to me... by pure virtue that the world is attempting to have me ignore the millions of other people who go through the same thing. I'm not ignoring how the world they have built ACTUALLY works in order for them to deliver me story. This is why wow legion's story was garbage to me. I'm not the actual highlord when there are 100 other "highlord"s right next to me. Don't ignore the way your game actually works. Treat me like the scrub I am. Or, if we're gods among normies, treat us like the non-unique gods we are.

If an MMO tells a story in a generic way like I am normal/normal compared to every other player, it cannot possibly be as powerful as a single player story where I actually am the one true <hero> of the game.

If an MMO has any kind of "change the world!" mechanics, it's lightweight and shallow, and either resets or is easily changed.

If an MMO has a true change the world mechanic, it often involves nolyfing and grinding to do it, so only people who play that way end up feeling powerful and I'm not interested in that.


Ergo, MMO stories cannot possibly be 10/10 when I compare it to the best gaming stories I've experienced.

FF14 might be 10/10 for an mmo, but that makes it like 5/10 for actual stories that have divergent endings, true "one true" stuff, and actual world impacts you can make as a player. An MMO will never touch the witcher 3, red dead redemption 2, etc.

You are out of luck cause every mmo does that.

Not only that but people expecting movie quality storytelling from an mmo are lying to themselves. A movies is a condensed 2 hour production. An mmo goes on for hundreads of hours. There's gonna be filler.
The closest one to a movie is SWTOR. But alas, dead time traveling around exists as well. They then made a very movie like experience with the Knights of the eternal throne duoligy and most players left the game cause it's an mmo, not a telltale game you play in 3 hours and are done with. FF happens to deliver tons of story content AND the mmo content to go with it.
WoW only does story for like 30m with filler quests and one cool 2 minute cinematic at the end before they dispatch you to go repeat some part of the content over and over. GW2 does very much the same.

So, yeah, i do think FF is the most engrossing story experience. Though ofc, theres some merits to the others too.

[Lazuli]

Lots of misinformation in this post, first I do listen to its music & read everything like I do in every game. I finished complete ARR story and all of shadowbringers, and learned of a lot in between stories from my coworker & this thread. I knew this would trigger a lot of people but don't read other peoples posts and assume they are mine lol..

I still don't think the story is good because of its representation, I also didn't praise GW2 story but its presentation which was atrocious at launch but picked up in living world chapters. And unlike FF14 there is a recap for the beginning of the story you can play through quickly without 9000 fetch/teleport quests. The story in GW2 is childishly written with some SJW sprinkled in so it's definitely not good, but its presentation is top notch vs any other MMO out there. Big cinematic moments with an engine that is not restrictive at all makes for some great potential story telling.

This games story as a new player is just awful because you are forced to slog through all of it to get a understanding of it all. That is FAR too many boring quests, travel time, etc. Anyway I got my answer, play through it all and want to kill myself or just play for the dungeons and raids. I know which one I'll choose lol.

[Wangming]

That's why I feel Shadowbringers is so amazing, not because the story is anything hugely innovative or game changing in the world of storytelling, but because the journey through it is so entertaining, immersive, well paced, etc... It's so polished and well put together it made it an absolute joy to experience.

I'm going to quote this, because this is the reason, well one of the reasons, why I prefer the first witcher game over the third. The third might have a better story and more choices, but ehmmm....why do we want to find Yennefer again? Oh right she was our crush in the book we never read. And the guy we never saw in game told us to find Ciri who was absent from the first two games and the game totally tells us why she is important to Geralt so...yeah. In the first game you know why you should care for Triss, why to hate the Professor.

In Shadowbringer you have a great villain with a diabolical plan that you can still sympathize with, old friends, a sense of adventure, plot twists, minimal choices, character development all around and a nice story structure where things began grimdark, you slowly solve the problems till the triumphant conlusion where it falls into grimdark again till the actual final conlusion.

It is no Rashomon, but every part of it works very well.

It's like a very good steak. It is nothing more than meat and salt, but it is wagyu beef and Himalayan salt. SWTOR is probably a cake. At the beginning it is awesome. But once you are done with the class stories it gets progressively worse. I never got far enough with Guild Wars 2 so I don't know. TESO probably a sandwich. A sub. It doesn't matter where you start, just finish all of it somehow.

WoW is your grandma's cooking. It used to be the best thing ever. But she doesn't know any new recipes, her hands are shaking and her eyesight is bad. But she is your grandma and you love your grandma. Plus you grew up on that stuff.

[Katchii]

Lots of misinformation in this post, first I do listen to its music & read everything like I do in every game. I finished complete ARR story and all of shadowbringers, and learned of a lot in between stories from my coworker & this thread. I knew this would trigger a lot of people but don't read other peoples posts and assume they are mine lol..

I still don't think the story is good because of its representation, I also didn't praise GW2 story but its presentation which was atrocious at launch but picked up in living world chapters. And unlike FF14 there is a recap for the beginning of the story you can play through quickly without 9000 fetch/teleport quests. The story in GW2 is childishly written with some SJW sprinkled in so it's definitely not good, but its presentation is top notch vs any other MMO out there. Big cinematic moments with an engine that is not restrictive at all makes for some great potential story telling.

This games story as a new player is just awful because you are forced to slog through all of it to get a understanding of it all. That is FAR too many boring quests, travel time, etc. Anyway I got my answer, play through it all and want to kill myself or just play for the dungeons and raids. I know which one I'll choose lol.

It still sounds like you just don't like story that much. Which is fine. The presentation is lacking, true, but that's a game play thing and not directly related to the story itself being good or bad. The story being told can be a good story that you like, but totally dislike the medium in which it's being told. That's what ARR was for me.

Your criticism is valid as far as the game play and questing experience, but your conflating those experiences with it being a bad story, which isn't necessarily accurate.

[mario710]

The story in GW2 only takes like a couple hours to get through each of the updates, but they started requiring some grind so people don't go through it so quick, only thing that takes time really. I only log in to do the stories, I play less once they started pulling some retarded WoW shit to block it here and there. I hate that games maps more than anything in the fucking world so I hate having to traverse them unless I can go straight through and continue the story. It definitely got 9000x better quality than launch though. I am talking about living world which continues story after base expansion story, but they do the same shit with main story.

I would at least recommend experiencing palawa joko in path of fire.


And yes I boosted , I had no choice, my gf wanted me to play with her and the questing in this game was unplayable boring, I already suffered through ARR and it took me like a month. Fuck any more unless its current content.. maybe someday I will go back and watch the cutscenes to get the full picture but I doubt it, it's just too tedious. Stormblood story really isn't confusing at all.. at least I know who the ascians are from ARR and most everything else was new, a coworker explained to me who the exarch was the prisoner in crystal tower raid or whatever.

What more would I need to know to make the story better?

Nothing.

You did exactly what you were told not to do. That is entirely your fault and yours alone.

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Lots of misinformation in this post, first I do listen to its music & read everything like I do in every game. I finished complete ARR story and all of shadowbringers, and learned of a lot in between stories from my coworker & this thread. I knew this would trigger a lot of people but don't read other peoples posts and assume they are mine lol..

I still don't think the story is good because of its representation, I also didn't praise GW2 story but its presentation which was atrocious at launch but picked up in living world chapters. And unlike FF14 there is a recap for the beginning of the story you can play through quickly without 9000 fetch/teleport quests. The story in GW2 is childishly written with some SJW sprinkled in so it's definitely not good, but its presentation is top notch vs any other MMO out there. Big cinematic moments with an engine that is not restrictive at all makes for some great potential story telling.

This games story as a new player is just awful because you are forced to slog through all of it to get a understanding of it all. That is FAR too many boring quests, travel time, etc. Anyway I got my answer, play through it all and want to kill myself or just play for the dungeons and raids. I know which one I'll choose lol.

Only one of those options will spare us from this drivel. Seal the deal.

[Swnem]

Your criticism is valid as far as the game play and questing experience, but your conflating those experiences with it being a bad story, which isn't necessarily accurate.

Pretty much this.

The world and story are very well built. The questing experience itself, not so much, especially in ARR and Astral quests. I am not a huge fan of HW's, but Stormblood really improved the quest pacing and made me fall in love with the game. Playing SB it seems to keep improving.

[Sorrior]

That explains a lot, they aren't really standalone stories. I meant shadowbringers when I said stormblood but I'm sure you caught that..

All the more ugh that I would have to go back and do all those boring quests. Does the new viewing-old-story mechanic they added actually make you do them over or do I view only the cutscenes? I bought the full skip, all the way to recent xpac and boosted. I feel like this game is anti-new player cuz for everyone who has played it up to current it's no problem you got all those quests in patches. A new player gets 9000 boring fetch and teleport quests making it extremely tedious to get into the story, at some point you say hey ok I want to play some max lvl dungeons and raids plus the combat is atrocious at low lvls.

I am really enjoying tanking tho much more than I did in WoW, the instances are unmatched in FF14. I am going to boost a dps after I finish everything on my DK.

They are also adding a NG+

[Swnem]

You will find that most people believe that Heavensward has the best story, and that Stormblood's story is considered to be a tier above A realm reborn post content patch, and below Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

For me it's Shadow Bringers, Heavensward, Stormblood Yotsuyu Arc, STB Zenos Arc, STB everything else, then ARR.

It's okay that you don't like FF14th's story. I believe that it is tailored heavily to people who are predisposed to liking Final Fantasy's storylines and themes.

If you got to 78 and you don't like the story, then it's simply not for you. It's hard to give objective assessments for stories in games of this nature.

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This also explains a lot. SHB's story is kind of a circlejerk on FFXIV's story thus far. So much so that it started permeating the story in STB before STB's main conflict was even resolved (I loved the way they did it too).

I hate to sound like a hipster, but to get SHB's story, you have to play through ARR to now (you can skip stormblood).

Honestly, you can skip nothing. The story is multi-threaded. If you skip a part you will be missing on others. The whole story is built with these threads ending in a big pay-off. If you didn't follow the thread, you missed the pay-off.

This is simple. I know it's not something many of us were used to playing WoW, but if you want to enjoy FFXIV, you have to play opposite of what you did with WoW. Where in wow you skip everything to get to end game where the fun is and you get the gist of the story with the voiced bits cause the side quests are completely bland and inconsequential fetch quests not worth reading.

FF doesn't work like that, so, first thing if you want to enjoy it, is you gotta reset those WoW gaming habits.
Go in to enjoy the story. Read it, stick with it, don't rush. Take your sweet time, it's not worth it to rush to end-game. Along the way you will also find out how engrossing the game is in terms of content variety and how everything is an achievement and not granted to you the way it is in WoW.

The questing is not great on ARR and the combat is slow, so, yes, theres quite a bit of braving to get to the good part, but if you care about getting to know this world and characters, everything keeps getting better and better paced as you go and you will find what i now believe is the best mmo in the market.

This game is a journey, it's not a race.

Actually, i just watched a video that explains this situation well in reaction to peon's video on ffxiv. Might be worth watching to understand what i mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV7IQEk5Ggc

[Azmoden]

"The story sucks, even though I paid to skip it".

Lazypeon, is that you?

I can play that game too!

The OP sucks in bed, and I know this even though I've never slept with him/her/it.

Please have a nice cup of shut the fuck up OP.

[BeepBoo]

You can just say you don’t like the story, but don’t try to come up with some bullshit excuse like this one.

You're confusing what I mean by suspending disbelief. I'm completely capable of ignoring things that don't work in real life that exist in a video game universe as the game allows them to. They are two entirely separate worlds. While I can't fly in real life, if a game world says MY CHARACTER can fly within it, then I can fly within it.

How strict and true to the things the story sets up is what makes a game better or worse. A game that has an organization (the silver hand) with only ONE TRUE leader (the highlord) can't suddenly expect me to step up into that position while simultaneously creating millions of other highlords in the process and expect me to just be like "yeah! I'm the real thing!" No. Not how the game world works. There would only be one actual highlord, but they attempted to create a single player game experience where we're the focus because they realize single story is better, but then that invalidates the game world itself since the game is NOT single player.

Basically, MMOs should just cut their losses on this front and focus on the things that they do better. As I said, they will NEVER EVER compare to a true single player game story where you don't have top pretend IN the game while pretending PLAYING the game that something works.

Again, there's the real world, then the video game world. They're two entirely separate worlds. THEN some video games take it a step further and try to create another level of bullshit on top of that, telling me to not look behind the curtains of their very own world. I'm not going to go any further down the inception chain on that front. One layer of disbelief max.

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Using this assbackward logic, literally every single game that tells a story fails then because you can't be Hawke from Dragon Age 2 if I'm playing it myself!

Oh? Your DA2 game world is inseprably connected to my installation of DA2 is it? We're running around, visible to each other, doing the same stuff, interfering with each other's gameplay?

Regardless of whatever phase bullshit blizzard pulls, the game world is AT LEAST as big as the server population, and getting even more blurred with CRZ to the point where that's even not enough for consideration.

Again, stop speaking on things you're 100% ignorant about especially when people are literally telling you straight up that you're wrong and the story does address it.

Does the game tell every individual they are the "light whatever, all these other people are just less special" or not? Does that cause actual flaws in the logic or not? Can't have everyone simultaneously be the "ONE chosen one" and then also NOT the chosen one based on perspective. Either they are or they aren't. The game is defying itself, which is the problem.

[Katchii]

You're confusing what I mean by suspending disbelief. I'm completely capable of ignoring things that don't work in real life that exist in a video game universe as the game allows them to. They are two entirely separate worlds. While I can't fly in real life, if a game world says MY CHARACTER can fly within it, then I can fly within it.

How strict and true to the things the story sets up is what makes a game better or worse. A game that has an organization (the silver hand) with only ONE TRUE leader (the highlord) can't suddenly expect me to step up into that position while simultaneously creating millions of other highlords in the process and expect me to just be like "yeah! I'm the real thing!" No. Not how the game world works. There would only be one actual highlord, but they attempted to create a single player game experience where we're the focus because they realize single story is better, but then that invalidates the game world itself since the game is NOT single player.

Basically, MMOs should just cut their losses on this front and focus on the things that they do better. As I said, they will NEVER EVER compare to a true single player game story where you don't have top pretend IN the game while pretending PLAYING the game that something works.

Again, there's the real world, then the video game world. They're two entirely separate worlds. THEN some video games take it a step further and try to create another level of bullshit on top of that, telling me to not look behind the curtains of their very own world. I'm not going to go any further down the inception chain on that front. One layer of disbelief max.

And my point is that I think you're being ridiculous. If you can suspend your disbelief about bunny women, cat people, elves, and talking tigers, existing and slinging fireballs, commanding the essence of a being that only exists because people believe in it, raising people from the dead, and martial artists using their fists to do any real damage against a gigantic mechanized soldier/tank/spider/whatever and you want to try and say that you aren't able to just experience the story and enjoy it because there can't be more than one Warrior or Light?

Shadowbringers story and experience was better than a fair amount of single players games I've played.

This sounds like a "you" problem, not a game problem. I do get where you're coming from, but it shouldn't be THAT far of a leap based on all the others suspensions of disbelief you have to do to even play a High Fantasy game in the first place.

[BeepBoo]

because there can't be more than one Warrior or Light?

The game tells me all those cat people, elves, tigers, spells, mechanics, etc, exist and work the way they do. And they ACTUALLY do work that way in the game. There's no disagreement. The game is working the way it tells me it works. The game is then ALSO TELLING me it works one way and then working entirely differently with the warrior of light. It can't have it both ways, because it disagrees with itself. Literally any time a game does that, I get angry. It detracts from the game and tells me the makers are lazy. In this particular case, they're relying on a trope of "the one hero" to make their story engaging because they weren't clever enough to figure out how to make a compelling one within the confines of the actual game world and how it exists/was built/whatever.

Again, how the game WORKS better be how the game is TELLING me it works.

This sounds like a "you" problem, not a game problem.

Every problem is a "you" problem. Even systemic ones. Every single problem is personal only, so I fail to see why that matters. Everyone has different desires and expectations. If some people can enjoy being lied to by a game about how the game's world actually works, cool. More power to them. I find it annoying as fuck.

[Irian]

Opinions are like assholes, etc.

You're free to think that, but proclaiming it like it's some statement or you have some kind of objective stance on it is stupid. Not everyone's going to like everything, and hell, not everyone's a fan of JRPGs.

I'm not going to tell you that the story is the best thing ever but I enjoy it a lot and I'm invested in what happens to the world (worlds?) and characters. I can't say that about any other MMORPG I've ever played.

[Katchii]

The game tells me all those cat people, elves, tigers, spells, mechanics, etc, exist and work the way they do. And they ACTUALLY do work that way in the game. There's no disagreement. The game is working the way it tells me it works. The game is then ALSO TELLING me it works one way and then working entirely differently with the warrior of light. It can't have it both ways, because it disagrees with itself. Literally any time a game does that, I get angry. It detracts from the game and tells me the makers are lazy. In this particular case, they're relying on a trope of "the one hero" to make their story engaging because they weren't clever enough to figure out how to make a compelling one within the confines of the actual game world and how it exists/was built/whatever.

Again, how the game WORKS better be how the game is TELLING me it works.


Every problem is a "you" problem. Even systemic ones. Every single problem is personal only, so I fail to see why that matters. Everyone has different desires and expectations. If some people can enjoy being lied to by a game about how the game's world actually works, cool. More power to them. I find it annoying as fuck.

It's not a lie. In your game, the other characters are just other adventurers. YOU as a player outside the game know that every other player is having the same MSQ experience as you are (which is the same thing in any single player game...everyone playing it plays through the same story). However, in game you're the only Warrior of Light, everyone else are just adventurers.

YOU'RE bringing your outside knowledge into the game world and saying it can't work that way.

So...you're screwing up your own experience because of whatever hang up this is.

You're free to have your opinion of it, but saying the game lies to you, disagrees with itself and that the makers are "lazy" is just a ridiculous layer of bullshit excuse to say you don't like it.

[Wyrt]

ARR's story is just not very good or interesting until you get near the end of it and then goes right back to not very good or interesting for the majority of the 2.x patch content.

Heavensward is pretty good.

Stormblood feels rushed because it tries to do both Ala Mhigo and Doma within the 60-70 leveling process and the story suffers because of it.

Shadowbringers is great.

[BeepBoo]

It's not a lie. In your game, the other characters are just other adventurers. YOU as a player outside the game know that every other player is having the same MSQ experience as you are (which is the same thing in any single player game...everyone playing it plays through the same story). However, in game you're the only Warrior of Light, everyone else are just adventurers.

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.

YOU'RE bringing your outside knowledge into the game world and saying it can't work that way.

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're screwing up your own experience because of whatever hang up this is.

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.

You're free to have your opinion of it, but saying the game lies to you, disagrees with itself and that the makers are "lazy" is just a ridiculous layer of bullshit excuse to say you don't like it.

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.

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 >"

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.

[Mereteran]

Interestingly, thanks a lot for making some points clear.

[Puremallace]

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.