The story isn't that good

[Lazuli]

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.

[Onikaroshi]

I mean, it's all opinions but you're pretty much in the minority. Not just the players but reviewers are applauding the story soooooo SE got it right /shrug

I hate the witcher 3, does it make it not a good game or a good story? no, just wasn't my cup of tea.

[Kyphael]

I wouldn't get hot over it. Remember, dick riding is not a form of transportation. Meaning it gets people nowhere.

[Shaetha]

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'd give it a 7, personally, but you're right about one thing. A portion of the community is sniffing the game's farts like they're fine wine. The game has a lot of problems. So does WoW. I don't think either of them are bad, but they definitely have different appeal in places.

That said, I was baffled by everyone saying how good the story was. It seemed like a fairly paint by numbers anime storyline. I was genuinely asking myself if the people saying that it was great had ever seen a movie before. It certainly wasn't bad, but it also wasn't anything memorable. Par for the course in FFXIV. I like a few of the characters. They have good personality, but I really don't care about the story at large. Hell, I enjoyed the crafting quests more than anything in the main story through Heavensward.

Honestly, Having played both FFXIV and WoW, the combat of FFXIV is strictly worse. The software itself is worse in a lot of ways. It offers several things WoW doesn't, like the crafting actually feeling like more than a checklist.

[rizyukaizen]

I found stormblood to have more meh moments then heavensward and comes no where near shadowbringers. I'm guessing your a new player that came over and is rushing threw everything or got a story skip from the store when those are really for people that wanna have an alt cause how the raid system works/wanna have another toon on a different data center.
Your not even there yet but one of the expert instances is off of the 8man Heavensward raid. Hell the Eden raid is one hell of a plot twist that may not effect the main story but I hope to god it does.

I played GW2 into Heart of Thorns. Yea it had its moment of epicness, but same thing that was starting then to get repetitive. And now the next dragon is awake yet again and what. Does it have the powers of Zhaitan and Mordremoth now?
If you dont like it then dont play it. Same thing with people with WoW if you dont like the game then dont play it.

But also FF14 you cant rush threw it. Nor get a story skip and hope to god know whats going on cause it just does not work that way with it.

[Loveliest]

Well not sure, my guess is people haven't played a lot of single player RPGs. You know, proper RPGs like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate /2 , Neveriwnter Nights /2, Dragon Age / 2 / 3 etc
So it's either a comparison with its own previous story, or a comparison with other MMOs.

[Lex Icon]

neither is the story in the games you brought up. GW2's story is pretty much hot garbage imo and ESO is ok but not very memorable.
same thing with WoW.

the only games in the similar space than can truly boast about a good story is TSW & SWTOR.

personally i liked stormblood more over heavensward.

[KrayZ33]

I liked it.

I like Shadowbringers and Heavensward more though. (ARR is trash)

But when I talk about the "story" I'm always also talking about how the characters developed and it's also always nice to see that there are two sides of a coin.
Most RPGs and *every* other MMORPG are miles behind FFXIV when it comes to that.

Basically, the investment in FFXIV characters is much higher than in other games such as Dragon Age, Neverwinter Night etc. etc.

The only other game I've played in the last 5 years or so that is stronger/equally strong in that regard would be The Witcher 1/2/(3)
Even Divinity Original Sins 2 (didn't play the first one) does pale a little against those.
Though Divinity Original Sins 2 was an absolute amazing game and the freedom of choice is obviously the reason why the storytelling does suffer a little.

[Faroth]

Most people liked parts of Stormblood more than the whole, but I think most agree that Heavensward and Shadowbringers are better story-wise. I personally liked a lot of the Doman side of Stormblood because of various elements feeling like throw backs to Kurosawa stories with the characterizations.

I do think Stormblood's better moments are post-leveling-MSQ (though I'd say the same for Heavensward).

In hindsight, Stormblood feels a bit like a lot of its story might be setting up elements for later.

GW2 never gripped me to get far enough in to say more about it. It was fairly dull at release with the "dynamic world" quickly being scripted repeated events exactly like FATEs are in XIV. I'd probably give it a run for the story if I had all the free time in the world.

[Lazuli]

Most people liked parts of Stormblood more than the whole, but I think most agree that Heavensward and Shadowbringers are better story-wise. I personally liked a lot of the Doman side of Stormblood because of various elements feeling like throw backs to Kurosawa stories with the characterizations.

I do think Stormblood's better moments are post-leveling-MSQ (though I'd say the same for Heavensward).

In hindsight, Stormblood feels a bit like a lot of its story might be setting up elements for later.

GW2 never gripped me to get far enough in to say more about it. It was fairly dull at release with the "dynamic world" quickly being scripted repeated events exactly like FATEs are in XIV. I'd probably give it a run for the story if I had all the free time in the world.

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?

[KrayZ33]

I don't believe you will have problems understanding the story overall, but you will certainly not understand it's impact and tone.
I mean, you are basically missing out on the parts that shape characters like Alphinaud into what they are in Shadowbringers

[dope_danny]

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.

Its a mainline FF game that literally says "Final Fantasy XIV Online" on the box. If you skip it then don't like it i don't know what you expect. Thats like taking someones save for FFVIII and starting at Disc 3.

[Katchii]

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?

I think it's less about "making the story better" and more that you're just simply not a huge fan of story to begin with, which isn't a bad thing.

Based on the way you're describing it, I just don't think story means enough to you to care about experiencing it. You just want it to "be good." Again not a bad thing, just a different game play style.

You don't even care enough about it to even call it by the right name; Shadowbringers. That kind of says a lot about how much you are invested in the story experience. Stormblood was the previous expansion, Shadowbringers is the current one.

[Yoshingo]

This entire thread comes off like a, "Everyone's talking about how they like something so I'm going to come in and say it's bad!"

The best part is that you freely admit to skipping large swaths of the story. It's like that Youtuber who got flak for reviewing the game and then skipping the entire story.

You're playing a Final Fantasy game, what the hell are you expecting? The fact that you proudly admit to doing so should, frankly, just invalidate anything you have to say about it.

It's like skipping to the end of a 4 book series and reading ~10-12 chapters across the four books in total and then coming in and attacking the story. Its worthless critique and should be disregarded as such.

There are plenty of worthy and valid critiques of, especially, ARR and parts of Stormblood. But arrogantly declaring you skipped giant parts of the story should just make everybody else ignore this thread for how proudly tryhard it comes off as.

"What more would I need to know to make the story better?" That comment right there should be enough to cue people in on ignore this low effort flamebait.

[Faroth]

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?

Well....

Character you met in a small town in ARR turned out to be a bigger character towards the end of ARR and became a huge character at the end of Heavensward leading into Stormblood.
Elements from ARR have come back up in Shadowbringers - like you mentioned, Crystal Tower, but others as well.
The whole Warriors of Darkness storyline from Heavensward is a huge part in Shadowbringers
HW finale MSQ comes back into play at the end of Stormblood and will play a larger role in Shadowbringers post MSQ story.
The whole end of ARR with the Sultana and the monetarists aren't necessary, but there's character development regarding the Sultana and the growth of liberated Ala Mhigo that I thought was a nice touch.
If you skipped everything, you might notice a Scion is missing in Stormblood. That was from events at the end of Heavensward.
The final boss of the main MSQ in Stormblood is tied to the final quests in Heavenward, accessing Omega Weapon (first mentioned in ARR as found beneath the Caretenau Flats) was designed to fight that boss, but it's brought back. The events of this final battle, and the artificial echo, hearken back to the Leviathan quest chain in ARR and may have huge implications in Shadowbringers.

It's hard to say and pinpoint specific things because so much has turned out to be woven together. A lot of the final MSQ in ARR where Lahabrea is rambling on makes a lot more sense with what we've learned in Shadowbringers. The Crystal Tower connection you mentioned - which also has more light shed on it and the Allagan Empire's collapse, in Shadowbringers.

Stormblood's post MSQ story has some parts that may connect to Shadowbringers and back. There's a small quest you've already passed regarding a weapon the Garleans have that comes back up and is part of the grand plan of the Ascians it seems. It might come back up, though at the moment it got thrown for a loop. There's a wasteland that has similarities to something in Shadowbringers, so Shadowbringers may shed light on something when we go back to Eorzea stuff again.

I don't know. It's kind of like asking which chapters of Lord of the Rings should you read and trying to pick out which chapters have the most pertinent details.

The problem might be that you're looking for a better self contained story rather than a chapter in the overall saga. While, yeah, it's digestible, but without the full story that led to this point, it's not going to have the same impact.

[Lazuli]

Well....

Character you met in a small town in ARR turned out to be a bigger character towards the end of ARR and became a huge character at the end of Heavensward leading into Stormblood.
Elements from ARR have come back up in Shadowbringers - like you mentioned, Crystal Tower, but others as well.
The whole Warriors of Darkness storyline from Heavensward is a huge part in Shadowbringers
HW finale MSQ comes back into play at the end of Stormblood and will play a larger role in Shadowbringers post MSQ story.
The whole end of ARR with the Sultana and the monetarists aren't necessary, but there's character development regarding the Sultana and the growth of liberated Ala Mhigo that I thought was a nice touch.
If you skipped everything, you might notice a Scion is missing in Stormblood. That was from events at the end of Heavensward.
The final boss of the main MSQ in Stormblood is tied to the final quests in Heavenward, accessing Omega Weapon (first mentioned in ARR as found beneath the Caretenau Flats) was designed to fight that boss, but it's brought back. The events of this final battle, and the artificial echo, hearken back to the Leviathan quest chain in ARR and may have huge implications in Shadowbringers.

It's hard to say and pinpoint specific things because so much has turned out to be woven together. A lot of the final MSQ in ARR where Lahabrea is rambling on makes a lot more sense with what we've learned in Shadowbringers. The Crystal Tower connection you mentioned - which also has more light shed on it and the Allagan Empire's collapse, in Shadowbringers.

Stormblood's post MSQ story has some parts that may connect to Shadowbringers and back. There's a small quest you've already passed regarding a weapon the Garleans have that comes back up and is part of the grand plan of the Ascians it seems. It might come back up, though at the moment it got thrown for a loop. There's a wasteland that has similarities to something in Shadowbringers, so Shadowbringers may shed light on something when we go back to Eorzea stuff again. I don't regret boosting at all because I would have quit before I got anywhere near shadowbringers, but it's a shame I missed so much story. I wish it was given in a much more friendly presentation.

I don't know. It's kind of like asking which chapters of Lord of the Rings should you read and trying to pick out which chapters have the most pertinent details.

The problem might be that you're looking for a better self contained story rather than a chapter in the overall saga. While, yeah, it's digestible, but without the full story that led to this point, it's not going to have the same impact.

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.

[Onikaroshi]

The inn allows you to just watch the cutscenes, but it's not EVERY cutscene. The new game+ coming will have you replay full quests, but they're starting off with full expansions not just parts, so if you want to do a quest in ARR you have to do ALL of ARR (though you don't need to leave them "undone" you can choose to mark them all as done again)

If you want to get caught up on story the best way without replaying, probably head over to youtube.

[Faroth]

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.

You can go to the Inn and watch just cut scenes and a little Google-Fu might turn up a list of the story crucial ones to watch. I imagine someone on Reddit has been dedicated enough to develop a list of most crucial cut scenes.

I had hoped the skip potions would have given new players a "story so far" recap they could watch, but alas.

[Graeham II]

I think FFXIV's story is pretty solid. It's not the best, but there's genuine effort put into it. My main criticism is that it leans a bit too heavily on some predictable tropes, it's easy to tell which characters are 'safe' and the negative consequences of the protagonists' actions are not as thoroughly explored as the negative consequences of the antagonists' actions...even when the antagonists have good reason to be doing what they're doing.

[Dartz1979]

Final fantasy 14 has better looking female models... look at the creation character screen alone for an example.