I dont think anyone can disagree with this article.Follow

And I'll never criticize XI's storyline... not aware of anyone here who has.

Agree with Hyrist though regarding the delivery of XI's story. It was atrocious. The WoTG expansion took like three years of updates to release the complete storyline, and that's just garbage. FFXIV's delivery is vastly superior; you buy the expansion, you get the story. And then you get additional storyline through patches, but the expansion itself is like a stand-alone game.

So much more sensible than paying for a game and not being allowed to play through its core for three years.

It's not complete. There are tons of threads hanging, to the point the format is usually "There's this high important thing I'm telling....But something else is happening, go check this out first", for about ten millions times. The story hasn't advanced, more or less, in three years. All of what happened in HW, save a minor thing or two, is a side story. IF the game crashes and burns (hypothetically) one day, the story won't be finished at this pace.



It's written way worse, and do not play the "personal tastes" here. Patch 2.55 and HW's beginning is a perfect example of terrible script.



I think you're not using the correct example, as WoTG was clearly watered down to buy some time (the reasons are unclear, I'm not one of the people who said it was done to "kill XI"). Vanilla + RoTZ+CoP should be the example to follow, IMO, not the garbage we're getting at the moment.
Paradoxically, even the idiot brothers of RoTZ, who get really minimal development and are mostly there for "shock value" are better "hahaha"-style villains than the Ascians.


Edited, Sep 21st 2016 6:56am by xizro

Thayos has the distinctions correct.

Again, you can choose personal favorites all you like on the story. I pretty much don't care one way or another on that department. I am addicted to Final Fantasy's storytypes and I really don't knock the stories themselves either way.

But you cannot objectively tell me that the delivery method of FFXI's was better. Sorry no. Objectively, it's not. Out the gate, not counting initial month's fees, you could play the entirety of Heavensward story in one shot.

As Thayos said, however, you would have to wait months, years even in certain cases, for the entirety of CoP, ToAU, WoTG, and even SoA. If you were subscribed during that period, you got left to rot.

Storywise, we get one complete arc with Heavensward, and successive episodes with every patch after that. Which, while all leading the same over-arching narratives, were still fairly self contained in and of themselves as well. I, truthfully, adore this format. I think it's the best story format I've seen an MMO do - and it remains my one untainted praise for FFXIV.

Actually, Vanilla + RoTZ+CoP are all neatly tied together, because they were part of the original plan (5 years MMO). And what I'm interested is the quality of the script. The delivery method is irrelevant for me. In XI's favor, the time limit they set helped creating a somewhat coherent narrative till CoP. In XIV, I suppose they have a rough idea how the story should end, but no idea when, and so there's a ton of padding.



Except the unanswered questions keep piling up, the narrative keeps opening threads and doesn't close them often, to the point certain plot points are closed in the most infuriating method possible, see for example Ul'dah's turmoil in 2.55 (as stupid as it started), which was "solved" within one cutscene with a character saying he'll fix it because it's EEEVILLL but also a SMARRT politician...but the player sees (and the character doesn't react at all) nothing of this. I really wish the script would stop trying to insult the player intelligence. After three years the motivations of the Ascians remains as unclear as ever, and only with a semi-talking head cutscene you get a glimpse of what they're trying to do. That's poor storytelling.
And as much as I liked the (original, no prequel, no Force Awakens) Star Wars...that's not really a good point to make.



Absolutely not. By the end of HW's "vanilla" the only feeling I got was "That's it? They haven't solved anything. What was the point of the entire story?". Also, the "clear end" was abruptly retconned in the first patch saying there was "unrest"...that was neither hinted nor shown till that part. And showing a character then completely forgetting about it for months isn't sign of an "overarching narrative".



Except you can argue with it. XI has padding (CoP's "Three Paths", WoTG's penultimate mission), XIV has padding (most 2.0 missions, several HW's missions) in the story. That's a fact, not an opinion. Just to make an example.

A reason I stopped playing XIV (not only for that one though) is that I felt the story was going nowhere, and to see those little bits of nothing I had to sit through horrible dungeons just to get enough ilevel to do them.



And? As I said, both methods of narrative are fine. My playtime was extremely limited back then and even now (till I unsubbed, that is). What I'd like is a coherent script. Not something that tries to go for shock every now and then and in which the player character continues to act like an idiot, and yet people praise him/her.


Edited, Sep 21st 2016 7:21pm by xizro

Huh. I actually disagree with Thayos. That's rare.

I'm with xizro on this one. It's been three years. THREE YEARS, and we know almost no more about the Ascians or their plans or motivations than we did back in 2.0. They just stand around in the dark saying mysterious things and planning... something. Being mysterious is fine, but after a while you have to start explaining something or what's the point? A mystery is only interesting it there's a possibility of figuring it out. The Ascian thing has been going on so long with no explanations now that I've stopped caring about them altogether.

Except that HW's story is a direct consequence of 2.55 (and in fact, players are required to complete the story before getting to Ishgard), and as various glimpses of cutscenes show, the world is still going on regardless of what players are doing. And that's the biggest issue: HW, being a total sidestory, offers no explanation of what's going on, save a few scenes interrupted with "but you have to do something else!" routine. You also have to add that the script was muddled due to localization choices, making the story even more confusing than it actually is (all of Midgarsorm's dialogue in 2.55 onwards in English was completely changed to make it more "mysterious", while in the Japanese dialogue he's actually more straightforward and you can actually understand what's going on).



Oh, I actually hated the X-Files, especially after the first couple seasons. My belief is it's way harder to do a complete logical story where everything fits than doing the "mysterious" stuff.



LOST was another series that dragged for too long, and only by some sort of miracle they managed to complete it. XIV, story-wise, risks the same.

And while you keep gutting the script stuff, that's what is most interesting to discuss. For example I feel 1.0's story, despite being a messy disjointed and unclear narrative, had far more interesting ideas than what we're getting now.
Also working on a script you can point out were it doesn't work without doing the "personal tastes". It's a personal choice to ignore certain nitpicks, but it doesn't mean they're not there. Again, It's been three years the player character has been thrown around with little input (as in doing something, not player choice) with several idiot choices, and yet people act like he/she's the saviour of the universe.




Edited, Sep 21st 2016 8:33pm by xizro

If memory serves, there was a writer's strike for a little while somewhere in the middle of that series. I wouldn't excuse the entire thing, but it definitely had an impact on the overall story progression.

As for the length of completion,I don't think it was so much that WotG's story took several years to complete as much as it was that there were only slightly modified copies of already implemented zones and no actual expansion. If you recall, this also led into the mini expansions which were more of the same and I feel the turning point for the worse for XI.

Also, the trend of players only completing story required for progress was set even before that point. That said, WotG didn't have the lockouts that expansions before it had in place to funnel players through content(e.g. clearing ZM for dynamis access, more ZM for sky access, ect.).

Funny thing is, I didn't really keep up with Lost while it aired. I feel like I was introduced to that show from a random advertisement. I could be way off, but I feel like it wasn't the typical TV show ad. Instead it was an ad for something related to the show that didn't actually exist.. but if you followed up on it there was some sort of bread crumb trail that led you all over the internet looking for clues.

I could be way off, but I feel like that was Lost. It's been a little while.