Wow refugees, what are you enjoying about the game?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Sevyvia

Yeah the account setup process is atrocious. It was even worse with FFXI's accounting system, PlayOnline. I don't know why Square - a multibillion dollar company - can't hire good software engineers and website programmers to fix their account management system. Making an account and buying the game is the biggest barrier of entry and Square is losing so many potential customers before they even play.

Outside of the last 30 minutes of these 10 hours, the game's story insists on itself to its own detriment. You have to play through the MSQ. At the same time, it seemingly doesn't trust the player to actually follow it. The same plot points are repeatedly explained in slightly different ways. How many times must I be told that Sahagin and pirates are up to no good?

I've noticed that Japanese writing tends to repeat the same exposition to the audience a lot, even when the characters should already know it. Good English localizations try to rewrite the lines so that doesn't happen.

The class quests are comically stupid. This is sad, because one of the things I miss in a game like WoW is more class and identity focus. I suppose I should update that to say that I want more class and identity focus that isn't absurd. An axe is not a weapon for cleaving stones. Going out to kill random mobs with a few words about protecting the innocent is incredibly low-effort. Perhaps this changes for other classes, but I play a Marauder, and this is what I get.

IDK. Cleaving stones with your axe is a very anime thing to do. I think WoW does comic book superpower stuff like that.

The quality of the writing of the class questlines varies wildly. I agree that the Marauder 1-30 storyline is meh, and there are quite a few dud job storylines.

The best job storylines IMO:

Best

• Samurai 50-60

• Gunbreaker 60-70

• Dark Knight 60-70

Good

• Lancer 1-30

• Dragoon 60-70

• Gladiator 1-30, 60-70

• Rogue 1-30

• Ninja 60-70

• Dark Knight 30-50

- Scholar (the individual storylines are nothing to write home about, but by the level 80 quest it overall felt like quite the journey)

The rest were meh.

Combat. It is slow due to the long GCD. And, far worse, it is almost absurdly repetitive. To this game, a combo is one ability after another. You get 1 combo. What does this mean? You're literally pressing 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.

Agreed on the combat. You get more off GCD abilities later on, so it's not really a 2.5 GCD, but still pre level 60 job gameplay is tediously boring. Vanilla ARR jobs do not get their fun class mechanics until the mid 60s, but mobs in the overworld die so quickly you'll never really get a chance to utilize your class mechanics outside of instances, but instances level cap you. So you won't be able to use your fun class mechanics until you reach Stormblood content (levels 60-70), which is 200+ hours into the game. You only get to use your fun class mechanics earlier if you play Ninja, Samurai, Red Mage, Gunbreaker, or Dancer.

This could perhaps be salvaged to some extent if the abilities at least felt good. Had some oomph. But they fail utterly in this. Cartoonish schhhwinngg! sounds. A lightshow, with no weight. Overall, the combat gets "below Satan's wine cellar" out of 10. Abysmal. There are ways it could be solved - looking into GW2, or WoW, or even SW:TOR. There are so many examples of this kind of combat being done well. I don't expect any of this to be fixed, because frankly, one of the videos I watched was from 2013. The game was, then, what it is now. Boring. No more damning thing can be said of it.

Later abilities look better, but overall if you want your abilities to look really cool, you kinda have to install mods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQxLLwxcL_Y

How satisfying the sound effects are depends on your class. The sound effects for Gunbreaker are pretty lackluster. You have to install a mod that makes them sound better. https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/8724

Next, cutscenes. For the first 9h30m, I was thoroughly confused by the people who rave about this game's cutscenes. The only cutscene I saw was the initial arrival to Limsa Lominsa. I can only conclude that people are calling the silent doll-parade "random NPC poorly emotes at you with the UI hidden and no voiced dialogue or fitting music" conversations cutscenes. I feel that's a misunderstanding of what a cutscene is, but even if you disagree with that take, it's at best an extremely, extremely low-effort, low-quality "cutscene." But then, "low-effort, low-quality" feels like it encapsulates a lot of what this game is.

When people say that FFXIV's story is good, they're usually talking about the story in the expansions. If you're used to Western AAA games then I'd imagine it would be jarring.

Being a JRPG fan (which I think makes up the bulk of FFXIV's audience), I'm used to non-voiced cutscenes with stock animations. They're not amazing but they get the job done, and present the story way better than just reading a long quest text box or having a floating head in a box at the bottom of your screen.

I overall liked the ARR base story. My biggest complaint is that the characters weren't very endearing. They start getting more interesting later on. The only guy I liked was Cid and the elves from the Coerthas subplot.

What can I look forward to?

Unless you switch to Ninja, Samurai, Red Mage, Gunbreaker, or Dancer, not much until you reach the Stormblood expansion and unlock your core job mechanics (that make gameplay a little more fun) and you have a lot of OGCDs that make gameplay a little faster. You are correct that gameplay will remain overall the same.

There's a reason 90% of popular stories open with something memorable. Game of Thrones? Ice monsters. Baldur's Gate 2? You're trapped in Irenicus' dungeon and must escape. Skyrim? You're a prisoner on your way to execution. Heck, even WoW, tame as it is, at least has you quest to take care of problems around your starting area. You see what I'm saying, here? FF14 does none of this. And then leads into slow and boring combat. The game is almost actively sabotaging itself. Interplay between game elements is just lacking. Not for lack of trying, just for being terrible. Story can't carry when gameplay is shit, joy of movement can't carry when gameplay is shit, gameplay can't carry when movement and story are shit, and all the reverses too. Why? Because none of it is good on its own.

If I were to rewrite the intro, I'd probably copy paste Skyrim's intro with you being a prisoner of the Garlean Empire, and then escaping to Eorzea during a skirmish.

I like the humble beginnings intro FFXIV currently has, though the actual intro questline is rather dull.

Allow me to compare to a completely different kind of game: Warframe. It's commonly said of the game that the story gets good 50-100 hours in. It varies how long people take to get to that part. Why do I then like Warframe, but not FF14? Because Warframe, for all its largely lacking story early on, at least carries itself with fun gameplay and joyful movement. And then the story really kicks into gear, and everything's just good. That is acceptable to me. Not ideal, but acceptable. FF14 has literally no element to carry it until lacking parts get good, if they ever do. All parts of the game need to get good.

Warframe's main selling point is the gameplay, which it (was) good at. Having played Warframe for 1,000+ hours, there was barely 10 hours of story in the game. It's less than 1% of the game. You could remove the story and it wouldn't matter, because Warframe lives or dies based on its storytelling. If you're not into the gameplay, Warframe isn't for you.

FFXIV's main selling point is the story. It's pretty much a JRPG with a multiplayer component. The vast majority of your playtime will be spent talking to NPCs and reading dialogue boxes, travelling to the next NPC, watching cutscenes, and occasionally doing a mandatory dungeon to progress the story. FFXIV's story content thus far is 300 hours long and 150 hours of it are spent watching cutscenes and talking to NPCs. The gameplay is meh but FFXIV doesn't live or die to most people for its gameplay; it lives or dies based off of the story. While the story execution gets better as the game goes on, it will fundamentally remain the same business of talking to NPCs, travelling to next NPC, watching cutscenes, and occassional combat. If you just don't like that formula, I'd imagine FFXIV wouldn't be the game for you.

After all this, am I going to keep playing? Surprisingly, yes. I have seen a few indications of something worth looking at. I'm still willing to give it a shot. That said, the game is teetering on the edge. If I have to check back here in another 10-15 hours to say that it's still all a shitshow, I kind of feel like I have to just toss the game in the trash.

I'd probably recommend beating the base game's story (at level 50). If you think the story is rough but you're overall okay with the formula, then stick with it because the story execution does get better. If you hate the formula of talking to NPCs and watching cutscenes, then just drop the game because FFXIV will always be first and foremost about that.

[Sevyvia]

Warframe's main selling point is the gameplay, which it (was) good at. Having played Warframe for 1,000+ hours, there was barely 10 hours of story in the game. It's less than 1% of the game. You could remove the story and it wouldn't matter, because Warframe lives or dies based on its storytelling. If you're not into the gameplay, Warframe isn't for you.

You have responded with a lot of things, but it's late, so I'm just going to pick out this one.

For me, story is important. Lore is important. I've been a roleplayer since before I started playing MMOs, during playing them, and still am. Because of that, I want to learn, and know. I'm a reader in real life, too. I'm saying this to explain that I don't think I'm a total miss as far as story-based games go. I think, perhaps, that what you're describing FF14 as is kind of like a book or movie with hoops, and that's a weird place for a video game to be. Gameplay is the unique thing that video games have, and while I accept that people might play video games for other reasons, to me, it's like someone saying they watch TV for the subtitles.

My point with bringing up Warframe (Hello, fellow 1000+ hour Tenno) is not whether what it does well is its main thing, but rather that, even if it does some things poorly, other things make up for it. I don't feel like FF14 is in the same position. It's an example of a game that isn't perfect, but manages to hobble along anyway. Even for someone who likes story.

[Lane]

Alright, I'll level with you. These are thought diaries.

Well, you're not wrong. Generally, those praising the game are not talking about ARR, myself included. It took me at least a month to get through ARR because it just wasn't an enjoyable experience. The MSQ was a drag and I would go days at a time not wanting to play. Unfortunately, because progression is locked behind the MSQ, I couldn't just level to 50 and be done with it which I easily could've done because I liked fates and the various logs (hunting, challenge).

I didn't hate the early gameplay as much as others did. It starts out slow and boring, yes, but such has been my experience in every MMO I've played so I don't consider that unique to FFXIV. My main gripe was not getting an AoE until level 30+ when the popular dungeon strategy is to pull everything.

Job quests depend on the job. I only got up to 30 with marauder/warrior, but it was one of the worst ones.

The game intro, for whatever reason, was better in the 1.0 version. I'm not sure why they decided to change it (for the worse). It's definitely the worst MMO intro I've played. Going around the starting city gathering/completing all the quests you'll easily be a good 30 minutes in before you ever see combat, which amounts to a couple of quests to kill (mostly 1-shot) maybe 10 mobs total before you're back to running around again talking to people.

I didn't like the story and, sadly, most of the characters are unlikeable. ARR in general does a poor job of establishing emotional attachment or arguably any feeling of investment in the world when all the NPCs treat you as a tool. This changes substantially in HW where the characters you interact with genuinely care about and appreciate you. The story is also exponentially better. Had FFXIV started at the end of ARR, I think it would have been a lot more gripping.

Unfortunately, this does boil down to suffer through ARR for it to get better. I ended up watching a playthrough of ShB (current expansion) because the ARR experience was so bad I wasn't convinced it improved as much as people said, I thought maybe it was a matter of taste, I needed to see for myself before I wasted any more time on it. I loved everything I saw, so I decided to stick with it. Then I played through HW and it was everything I'd wished ARR was.

[KrayZ33]

I have been playing Shadowbringers up to the quest: The Lightwardens. And i have to admit that the story is more brutal, dark and creepy so far....i like it!.

But the flood of players is impressive. A moment ago they scared me, because i was fighting some enemies in the "desert" area while doing the quest "A Desert Crossing", when suddenly i saw tons of shadows (i wasnt looking up) only to realise that a huge bunch of players were passing by....I have no idea what they were looking for, but the group was HUGE!. Is there something interesting to loot there or what?

They were probably doing hunts.

[Cwimge]

How it took maybe an hour of unwilling play to convince me to try literally anything else. This is as far from the game for me as it's possible to get. I resent every aspect of it

[Sevyvia]

Well, you're not wrong. Generally, those praising the game are not talking about ARR, myself included. It took me at least a month to get through ARR because it just wasn't an enjoyable experience. The MSQ was a drag and I would go days at a time not wanting to play. Unfortunately, because progression is locked behind the MSQ, I couldn't just level to 50 and be done with it which I easily could've done because I liked fates and the various logs (hunting, challenge).

Without wishing to fan any flames, my thoughts on FF14 could effectively be summarized with this: If I play a good game, I'm struggling to go to bed, and end up shuffling under the covers at 3 am, ready to get up 4 hours later for a bad day. But it'll have been worth it. FF14 is a game I struggle not to log out of after playing for 20 minutes. I will admit that I actually did like having a reason to kill random mobs (hunts), but that hasn't been the focus of the game at all.

I didn't hate the early gameplay as much as others did. It starts out slow and boring, yes, but such has been my experience in every MMO I've played so I don't consider that unique to FFXIV. My main gripe was not getting an AoE until level 30+ when the popular dungeon strategy is to pull everything.

For what it's worth, my experience with other MMOs has been similar. They do start slow. The difference is in how fast they get... faster. FF14 is the slowest I've ever seen. Looking at the spellbook, there's very little to look forward to on that front. I think that contributes to making it feel worse. And it is genuinely kind of worrying that I might be scaled back to this experience if I go and do dungeons later on.

I didn't like the story and, sadly, most of the characters are unlikeable. ARR in general does a poor job of establishing emotional attachment or arguably any feeling of investment in the world when all the NPCs treat you as a tool. This changes substantially in HW where the characters you interact with genuinely care about and appreciate you. The story is also exponentially better. Had FFXIV started at the end of ARR, I think it would have been a lot more gripping.

Unfortunately, this does boil down to suffer through ARR for it to get better. I ended up watching a playthrough of ShB (current expansion) because the ARR experience was so bad I wasn't convinced it improved as much as people said, I thought maybe it was a matter of taste, I needed to see for myself before I wasted any more time on it. I loved everything I saw, so I decided to stick with it. Then I played through HW and it was everything I'd wished ARR was.

I'll consider doing that. I generally don't like spoiling myself on a story-focused game. Just like with the story skip you can buy, it feels like I'm removing gameplay from myself. I really do hope the story is some kind of unacknowledged new 8th wonder of the world, because otherwise I don't think I can suffer through 50 hours to get to the first good part.

This is pretty much the tragedy of how the game presents itself to new players. You can see some of the arguments with the real fanatics in these threads, but that doesn't change the reality of how it looks to new players.

Yeah, it's something I didn't touch on, but wow. The game's community outside of the game (inside it seems mostly just silent) is one of the worst I've ever seen. I've used this forum since 2009, and I could, until entering this thread, count on one hand the number of people I've put on ignore. The number has exploded after reading through several pages of this thread. Not even from direct interaction with them, just seeing the... let's call it "mindset" that some have when discussing the game. It's really incongruent with the seemingly common assertion that the game's community is amazingly kind and great. Still, this is just a forum, and I have seen nothing bad (or good, for that matter) in-game.

The only encouragement I can give you is the hollow, "It does get better." because it really does, but it's such a slog until then. XIV loves to back-load all the interesting job identity stuff, and they don't seem to have learned from that. They'll even take some existing stuff and push it back to higher levels when an expansion hits. (Hey, vets: Remember when Warriors had huge self-healing on spenders like Steel Cyclone around level 35 and 45? Now the self-healing is attached to a new ability that comes at level 76. Oh...Kay...?)

As a veteran player, do I think it was worth it? Yeah, I enjoy myself now. The game is pretty fun to play, I like it thematically in some areas, the experience of the music and spectacles that are some of the fights is nice. But if my character was deleted tomorrow and I had to do it all over again? Ehhhhhhh....

I appreciate the honesty. I'm, to put it mildly, skeptical about the value of the "it gets better later" argument. Perhaps it does, but I wouldn't recommend an epic 10-book series to someone if the first 2 were terrible, and you couldn't skip them. Still, at least for now, I'm willing to give it a try for another while.

[Lane]

And it is genuinely kind of worrying that I might be scaled back to this experience if I go and do dungeons later on.

Yeah, I am not a fan of the way FFXIV does scaling. I've mained a lancer/dragoon, have a toolkit at 60 where I generally don't have to wait for GCDs, but in a roulette I may be put in a dungeon where I don't have any of my HW expansion abilities. Feels bad.

I'll consider doing that. I generally don't like spoiling myself on a story-focused game. Just like with the story skip you can buy, it feels like I'm removing gameplay from myself. I really do hope the story is some kind of unacknowledged new 8th wonder of the world, because otherwise I don't think I can suffer through 50 hours to get to the first good part.

It's a double-edged sword. You trade story reveals for being more cognizant of story elements that you may not have paid attention to otherwise. There have already been a few cases in HW where I wouldn't have given much thought to certain characters or events if I didn't know how important they are later. I've been known to watch series in reverse and enjoy them, so it works for me but might not for others. I also hate suspense and probably would've looked up spoilers at some point anyway. :P

If you decide to go that route and if you don't mind occasional lapses into lore commentary, I recommend watching Ethys Asher on YouTube. He has playthroughs of all of ShB, although, 5.0-5.3 is the bulk of the story with the rest tying up loose ends from prior expansions. The general consensus is that ShB was the best expansion with HW as a close second and I've found that to be the case as well. Once I got to HW I tore through the MSQ because I couldn't stop playing it, a stark contrast to having to drag myself through ARR.

I'm torn on ARR story skips for new players. I honestly do not feel you're missing anything of importance until 2.4 (post-ARR/pre-HW content) and only because it sets the stage for HW, albeit with the same mind-numbing formula as ARR. Even then, cutscenes (that you can re-watch in inns) may tell you all you need to know.

[Sevyvia]

If you decide to go that route and if you don't mind occasional lapses into lore commentary, I recommend watching Ethys Asher on YouTube. He has playthroughs of all of ShB, although, 5.0-5.3 is the bulk of the story with the rest tying up loose ends from prior expansions. The general consensus is that ShB was the best expansion with HW as a close second and I've found that to be the case as well. Once I got to HW I tore through the MSQ because I couldn't stop playing it, a stark contrast to having to drag myself through ARR.

Thanks for the recommendation. I remain conflicted, but perhaps I'll watch half an hour just to see if the general quality and tone has significantly improved, hopefully without massively spoilling myself.

[Lex Icon]

posted in the wrong thread.

[Zyrinx]

The only crafting system I've honestly enjoyed more than FFXIV's is WildStar's. WildStar just had a ridiculous degree of customization and minigame elements in its crafting system.

I wonder... do DoH's improve in later expansions or is the emphasis still solely on trying to max out quality for a chance at a HQ item?

Idk my highest DoH job is 49, lol. Leveling them all is a challenge imposed by the poor inventory system, and the somewhat insane variety of raw materials.

It even seems like some higher level recipes have low level ingredients, which I am not a fan of, if only for inventory reasons. Like, let me sell my Maple already, guys. And copper. And leather.

[NineSpine]

How it took maybe an hour of unwilling play to convince me to try literally anything else. This is as far from the game for me as it's possible to get. I resent every aspect of it

Show us on the doll where Yshtola hurt you.

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Without wishing to fan any flames, my thoughts on FF14 could effectively be summarized with this: If I play a good game, I'm struggling to go to bed, and end up shuffling under the covers at 3 am, ready to get up 4 hours later for a bad day. But it'll have been worth it. FF14 is a game I struggle not to log out of after playing for 20 minutes. I will admit that I actually did like having a reason to kill random mobs (hunts), but that hasn't been the focus of the game at all.

For what it's worth, my experience with other MMOs has been similar. They do start slow. The difference is in how fast they get... faster. FF14 is the slowest I've ever seen. Looking at the spellbook, there's very little to look forward to on that front. I think that contributes to making it feel worse. And it is genuinely kind of worrying that I might be scaled back to this experience if I go and do dungeons later on.



I'll consider doing that. I generally don't like spoiling myself on a story-focused game. Just like with the story skip you can buy, it feels like I'm removing gameplay from myself. I really do hope the story is some kind of unacknowledged new 8th wonder of the world, because otherwise I don't think I can suffer through 50 hours to get to the first good part.



Yeah, it's something I didn't touch on, but wow. The game's community outside of the game (inside it seems mostly just silent) is one of the worst I've ever seen. I've used this forum since 2009, and I could, until entering this thread, count on one hand the number of people I've put on ignore. The number has exploded after reading through several pages of this thread. Not even from direct interaction with them, just seeing the... let's call it "mindset" that some have when discussing the game. It's really incongruent with the seemingly common assertion that the game's community is amazingly kind and great. Still, this is just a forum, and I have seen nothing bad (or good, for that matter) in-game.



I appreciate the honesty. I'm, to put it mildly, skeptical about the value of the "it gets better later" argument. Perhaps it does, but I wouldn't recommend an epic 10-book series to someone if the first 2 were terrible, and you couldn't skip them. Still, at least for now, I'm willing to give it a try for another while.

Honestly, with an attitude this negative you are unlikely to appreciate when it does get better. It's not that anything you said is wrong per se, but I have a hard time believing that this level of negativity won't poison anything good that happens later.

This isn't a value judgement, just that if you hate it this much I don't think it changes so radically you'll like it.

EDIT: And honestly, even though everyone complains about it, if it is truly this terrible for you it really may be worth dropping the 7 bucks to skip the ARR story and then watch a recap.

[Sevyvia]

Honestly, with an attitude this negative you are unlikely to appreciate when it does get better. It's not that anything you said is wrong per se, but I have a hard time believing that this level of negativity won't poison anything good that happens later.

This isn't a value judgement, just that if you hate it this much I don't think it changes so radically you'll like it.

EDIT: And honestly, even though everyone complains about it, if it is truly this terrible for you it really may be worth dropping the 7 bucks to skip the ARR story and then watch a recap.

You may be right in that the game just isn't for me. I suppose I wanted it to be good enough to slog through some of it, but having watched an hour and a half of the opening of Shadowbringers from the channel recommended above, I didn't really see anything wildly amazing. More focused, more voice acting, but fundamentally much the same. I was reminded of other RPGs I've played, but not anything better, (though that level is still better than most MMOs) and it's hard to justify a game that doesn't really vibe with me just to get an experience I can get without that same struggle elsewhere. A shame.

[NineSpine]

You may be right in that the game just isn't for me. I suppose I wanted it to be good enough to slog through some of it, but having watched an hour and a half of the opening of Shadowbringers from the channel recommended above, I didn't really see anything wildly amazing. More focused, more voice acting, but fundamentally much the same. I was reminded of other RPGs I've played, but not anything better, (though that level is still better than most MMOs) and it's hard to justify a game that doesn't really vibe with me just to get an experience I can get without that same struggle elsewhere. A shame.

I guess they question is: What are you looking for and what aren't you getting, specifically?

Because a lot of people do have a problem where they spend so much time in one MMO that its really, really difficult to overcome the familiarity bias. That's a general human problem that everyone has when it comes to new things.

[Cwimge]

Show us on the doll where Yshtola hurt you.

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Honestly, with an attitude this negative you are unlikely to appreciate when it does get better. It's not that anything you said is wrong per se, but I have a hard time believing that this level of negativity won't poison anything good that happens later.

This isn't a value judgement, just that if you hate it this much I don't think it changes so radically you'll like it.

EDIT: And honestly, even though everyone complains about it, if it is truly this terrible for you it really may be worth dropping the 7 bucks to skip the ARR story and then watch a recap.

It's not the game for me. I'd love to harp on about it's many abject failings. From account creation to gameplay- but fans won't be swayed and I won't be convinced. My dislike of this series is my flat earth.

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I guess they question is: What are you looking for and what aren't you getting, specifically?

Because a lot of people do have a problem where they spend so much time in one MMO that its really, really difficult to overcome the familiarity bias. That's a general human problem that everyone has when it comes to new things.

new world hooked me pretty quick after a decade and more of wow. Final fantasy failed to keep me engaged for an hour at once

[NineSpine]

It's not the game for me. I'd love to harp on about it's many abject failings. From account creation to gameplay- but fans won't be swayed and I won't be convinced. My dislike of this series is my flat earth.

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new world hooked me pretty quick after a decade and more of wow. Final fantasy failed to keep me engaged for an hour at once

New World isn't out. "I got hyped during a limited time beta" isn't really a way to gauge any game.

[Lane]

I suppose I wanted it to be good enough to slog through some of it, but having watched an hour and a half of the opening of Shadowbringers from the channel recommended above, I didn't really see anything wildly amazing.

That's too bad, but if the opening quests in Ahm Araeng didn't grab you I don't know what would. The main villain is my favorite after FFXV, but takes awhile to develop and I've never cried at any video game as much as I did in 5.3. It's all subjective though.

[Icelin]

new world hooked me pretty quick after a decade and more of wow. Final fantasy failed to keep me engaged for an hour at once

I am a pretty big FF fan. I would say that is one of the worst downfalls of FF14... is the beginning. The slog at the start would've had me packing long ago, if I had no roots with the franchise. I heard they made changes to this already. Or you can buy some type of booster/skip pack. Still I would never recommend a "booster" type pack in that game. That's just me tho.

[Lane]

I heard they made changes to this already. Or you can buy some type of booster/skip pack. Still I would never recommend a "booster" type pack in that game.

It wasn't changed as much as people think, they mostly removed extra steps from quests like the one where you have to splash a bucket of water on an NPC used to have you collecting a bucket and filling it with water at a stream first, that's an example of what was removed. I think I read a total of 15 quests that were along those lines were removed, not much given the scale of the ARR MSQ. It's still largely the same experience it always was. I think the problem is they have too many callbacks. Like not being able to remove the wine & cheese arc because you'll meet some of those NPCs later who reference that quest chain.

Except for the Coerthas quests, I don't feel anyone is missing anything by using an ARR story skip (cliff notes: Garlemald and beast tribes summoning primals = bad) especially as you can watch all the cutscenes from the feast that fully explain why you're in the position you're in heading into HW.

[OrcsRLame]

It wasn't changed as much as people think, they mostly removed extra steps from quests like the one where you have to splash a bucket of water on an NPC used to have you collecting a bucket and filling it with water at a stream first, that's an example of what was removed. I think I read a total of 15 quests that were along those lines were removed, not much given the scale of the ARR MSQ. It's still largely the same experience it always was. I think the problem is they have too many callbacks. Like not being able to remove the wine & cheese arc because you'll meet some of those NPCs later who reference that quest chain.

Except for the Coerthas quests, I don't feel anyone is missing anything by using an ARR story skip (cliff notes: Garlemald and beast tribes summoning primals = bad) especially as you can watch all the cutscenes from the feast that fully explain why you're in the position you're in heading into HW.

Imo, the 1-50 content in ARR is better than HW. It's very basic, but imo that gives it a weird sort of charm. When the devs try and make things more complicated with the Uld'ah stuff at the end of ARR and the Dragonsong War plotline from HW, I think the storytelling gets significantly worse.

There's a lot of what I see as just nonsense scenes, like when Raubahn duels Ilberd and everyone just sits around and does nothing because the evil Lalas say so. Something early ARR did really well is nearly every fight scene transitions to gameplay. In late ARR and HW the WoL just becomes a statue in these incredibly length fight scenes where other characters do all the work.

This scene is like the prime example of what I'm talking about. https://youtu.be/DiC7uFM8x1U?t=398

They just stand there for 2 minutes while the defeated robo goblin ends the world. The Warrior of Light, someone that regularly commits deicide, somehow does not enough reaction time or will, or desire to stop a broken robot goblin from ending all life on the planet. Hell, Wedge could have walked up to him and kicked him in the face.

If you're the sort of person that cares about story at all, and early ARR bothers you even slightly, it's basically guaranteed that you'll uninstall the game after watching a scene like that. And late ARR and HW are filled with scenes like that. Just characters standing around talking while they should definitely be doing things.

I think if you need to skip the 1-50 ARR MSQ because it's so bad, then you're just not gonna enjoy FF14.

[Sevyvia]

That's too bad, but if the opening quests in Ahm Araeng didn't grab you I don't know what would. The main villain is my favorite after FFXV, but takes awhile to develop and I've never cried at any video game as much as I did in 5.3. It's all subjective though.

No villain was introduced in the hour and a half-ish that I saw. A guy in a black robe who seemed to have done some questionable things, but no hints at a villain. Just heading to another world, getting some background on this other world, talk to a ghost-guy, then off to a desert market and then a cave to meet a character we've met before. I watched until she was introduced again with a brief cutscene. I have never made it past level 30 in this game, so while I vaguely know who this character is, they were largely just portrayed as an aloof, annoying child when I saw them last. Anyway, that's the extent of what I saw from this playthrough. More voice-work, but still a lot of unvoiced stuff that feels in many ways quite similar to what I see when I step out of Limsa Lominsa on my low-level Marauder.

It was certainly more tightly produced. We were going somewhere. But I don't really get why it would be particularly gripping in a grander sense, compared to other games or stories. Too little context. That's on me for coming into a story 75% of the way through it, but still. A post-apocalyptic world isn't a unique story. I will say that the game at least looked fairly on the level of slightly older single-player RPGs. That's not a dig at it, FF14's engine is older at this point, and looking like that while at least having a directed story is pretty fine. I don't play story games for insane graphics.

So, in a vacuum, it's fine. But it's not in a vacuum, it's asking me to play through, what, 200 hours of stuff before I get to that? I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I could buy and download a lot of RPGs and be having a fairly similar experience within an hour or two, rather than 200. In a way, this actually just makes me sad, because I probably would've enjoyed playing the game if all of it was made the way Shadowbringers is, rather than the slog it actually starts with.

Also, to be clear, I watched the first video and then about 34 minutes into the second video of this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW-t...7qUBylI9KMAlJF