Final Fantasy is 100% my favorite series. Final Fantasy XIV has a really good story. That said, the story's delivery fails massively and hurts it so badly that it makes it difficult to recommend to any other series fans.
First, nearly every piece of information is delivered through overwrought exposition and ham-fisted dialogue. You'll finish a dungeon or big fight moment and then be told you have to attend a meeting where everyone recaps with head-tilted, hand on chin the exact events you just witnessed in excruciating detail. Then they tell you to teleport back to where you just were to continue.
Second, the characters are severely melodramatic and for lack of a better term, anime tropes. They eschew nuance or layers in order to become one-note, and if in the next expansion that trope doesn't necessarily fit the story then they just reinvent the character completely in many cases. There is absolutely no subtext in the writing or room for speculation or interpretation. A man will die trying to hold up a building so his friends can escape, and those same friends will stand under the building crying and saying their farewells for 10 minutes... only to get outside and immediately say "Eh, he's probably fine." Within one expansion you can experience 5 different takes on the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stories, because the side quests are hot garbage 95% of the time (there are some I like).
Then lastly, from a story perspective for an MMO, you aren't actually playing your original character. I didn't quite realize this at the beginning, but as I finished the latest expansion [SPOILERS] it made clear that I am playing Square Enix's main character, not mine. I chose what they looked like, but I am absolutely the final, lost member in a council of fallen demigod-like figures responsible for the current state of the world... SE says so. That's fine if it were Noctis, Tidus, Cloud, w/e... but this is an MMO.
Story aside, I'll make a quick and simple point: playing with friends is way more difficult than it needs to be. I'm either waiting for them to do a dozen pre-reqs, they're waiting for me to be eligible for something, etc. I've lost track the amount of times I've hopped on after a patch hits and suddenly my roulettes are "????" and bam... can't play with my buds. It's infinitely worse when my wife joined via the actually awesome free-trial and found out that to play with her I'd essentially be a glorified baby sitter as she ran from cutscene to cutscene, since her character could do jack-all but a Guildhest or two.
The only fond memory I have of Totorak is that the last boss was actually somewhat of a challenge if your entire party was literally brand new to the game (we were), didn't understand ANY of the game mechanics (we didn't), and were approx 30ilvl lower than intended (quite literally mostly starting gear that the one quest FORCES you to buy from the vendor).
It's a pretty universally disliked dungeon last I checked too? Sure it was a little less forced hallways (despite still being forced hallways), but most of it was super tedious and the enemies hardly interesting and the low level gameplay not great either.
So is that how you'd define and wish for more challenging 4 man content?
It's not a problem that the direction of the world's story is decided on by the game makers, it's the fact that the identity of your character is. For example, in FFXI you make your character and use them to engage is Square's story for the game... they never tell you who you are, where you came from, etc. Even in the final conclusion of XI's Rhapsodies, the game goes out of the way to define you by all the actual accomplishments you did or didn't do as the player. They don't dictate who you were prior to rolling your character, and don't try to tell you you're something you're not after. You're just a hero that persevered through it all and became a legend because of the deeds at hand.
WoW is similar. Whether I play a Warlock or a Paladin, the events and actions are generally so vague (especially back in Vanilla's time), that there's still tons of space to role play the way you want to and to define your motivations and subtext for why it's probably good for the planet you live on to not evaporate in hellfire. Even in the heavily scripted events of Legion, the reason you became a Highlord or Leader of the Black Harvest wasn't because of some blessing or sacred prophecy you were born to fulfill - it's because of the actions that brought you to that moment and earned the reverence of those around you.
Every step of the way in XIV, people praise you for everything you've done as you've made a legend of yourself... but that's tempered with the fact that the reason you're able to do anything is that you're special, touched by the creator, channeling the echo, lighting the crystals, etc. until we find out that you are a demigod, one of the summoners of the first Primal. Whatever origin story you came up with, motivations and convictions you had, struggles or limitations you'd balanced them against... none of that matters because you will always receive your divine Deus Ex to do the job for you. For example, at one point the game actually tries to disassociate itself with the ongoing Superman dilemma they've built you by having Sephiroth-wannabe Zenos absolutely obliterate you in a 1-on-1 fight. See? You're still mortal and there are other, regular mortals waiting to put your in your place if you don't remain vigilant. So some stuff happens, you level a couple times, and you face off against Zenos again, except before you even get a chance for a redo on that 1-on-1 fight, he eats a Super Primal and becomes even more powerful... how do you bridge that gap now?! God power, of course. No buildup, no explanation, no personally doing 8000 quests to empower a unique, external artifact that you personally enhance and invest in over the course of 2 years to justify you being able to win that encounter, you just do because you're a god - and soon enough in the next expansion they'll put in a cutscene telling you as much.
It had a Metacritic average of 48 and suffered from unstable servers — up to 400 crashes per day! — a lack of content and minimal story in a franchise known for having plot as one of its core parts. Yoshida pointed to three main reasons for Final Fantasy 14's failure in that first form.
Indeed. In FFXIV, you are an active participant around whom the world evolves, for good or for ill. In WoW, you are a passive observer... yet the world still revolves around you, for some reason.
Also, I like the idea that character creation is, quite literally, choosing a new form to incarnate into in the aftermath of the Calamity. It makes a ton of sense in the context of recent revelations.
No evil classes or races to play. I’ve gotta be the goodie two shoes, when games like swtor and eso embrace the villain fantasy head on
Plus, no world pvp I’m aware of and kind of generic combat
That said, Chocobo racing is amazing
This shit right here is what drives me up the wall about WoW's current story. "Oh yeah, you're important, wink nod nudge. I promise. Just stand right over here, out of the way of the important stuff. Oh, and go kill all these things for me like a good little boy, wouldn't you? You're important, HERO! CHAMPION MAN! Because I said so! Better not be in this cutscene though, we don't want you really seen." I would rather have FFXIV's or GW2's mode of "you're directly important." However, the best approach was back when you were a soldier, a bit of a nobody. They really kicked that to the curb in WoD, and since then it's been this idiotic balance of "You're important enough to be in the spotlight, but not the real spotlight."
- rough start
- bloated class abilities, rotation feels very punishing and unimpactful
- boss rooms and dungeons all feel the same
- horrible input lag
- low amount of content
- boring and flavorless gear and stats
The obvious thing - GCD - even with ton on off-GCD skills introduced in later expansions, it still feels very off.
Then lack of sound queues during the boss fights. I do fights mostly on sound - in WoW its either DBM or boss dialogue - in XIV we have pretty nice, visible telegraphs, yet most of the boss skills are totally silent.
And last gripe is the very poor quest structure - lots of back n forth backtracking. Instead of nice questhub, there is like 1-2 top 3 quests, which asks you to go to the other side of the map (or world), do speak to one NPC, and then go back to the questgiver for another quest in the same vine
Ok, you need to re-read what was said;
Again, to reiterate, the issue isn't that the matchmaking pairs veterans with new players that need an old dungeon to progress. The issue is that even when you are queuing with all friends, none of them new and all of them veterans with 70+ levels, getting the same few ARR dungeons nine times out of ten. I weep for joy in the ultra rare instances we actually see a stormblood or even a heavensward dungeon in leveling roulette.
I enjoy it more than WoW these days but the time it takes before the combat becomes good is ridiculous.
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
Ability bloat for me is the big one, especially as a tank, after that is the story. I don’t care for the story but I enjoy the combat so levelling pass the expansions and patches was horrible for me.
Like the entire group of shaman masters we meet in each zone of the Cata expansion only to see them all die in a 20 meter gauntlet before the end of a dungeon... by being grabbed by a tentacle and flung into the air...
In FFXIV, I was really happy to have a quest dealing with the plight of the Doman Refugee's having to return to Doma after building a life for themselves and becoming an integral part of Revenants Toll. It addresses the friendships and crushes they are leaving behind, plus them making sure to show their gratefulness to the us and the people of Revenants Toll, who also consider them part and parcel of the town after helping make it what it was over 2 expansions
I'll tell you my biggest issue: unbelievable lag and major connection problems.
I'm in one of the countries with the absolute best Internet connections. However, when they have events or during weekends I cannot connect to their servers. I cannot play the game at all. And my friends have the same issue. There are hundreds of forum posts about this and yet I can't seem to find the solution.