Is it just me?Follow

They'll still always pretty much be Galkas and such. But yeah, hopefully they move less away from the "hi this is a standard MMO" and start showing more creativity in their quest design because as proven with XI, XIV 1.x and even DQX, they have it in them. Instead of having me pass out pretzels, why not have me go to an (open world) dungeon that ends in a boss chamber? Every FF game (including the earlier XIV version and XI) had you going into "starter" dungeons either at the absolute start or very early in your career. In ARR, you do go into the (retooled) dungeons from 1.0, but there's almost no reason for a lot of the content in there to exist except for the last cutscene.

Like, all of the zombies and Soul Flayer boss? Who was he and where was he in all this time? He didn't exist in any lore in 1.x, so why suddenly in the 5 years he became a thing then was vanquished?

THAT is what I'm talking about when they need less filler quests, less pretzel distribution, less laundry runs and more quests relevant to the world.and lore. Same with Bronze Lake and Wanderer's Palace. We know that Nym and such has always been a thing and we knew there was something under the lake..but that massive of a change? An entire civilization -under- that lake? With no signs of it before? That too is why I dislike instances being so disconnected from the world. In Heavensward hopefully they do a better job connecting things or Nyzu...err Alexander raid will too be a "secret operation" like Coil was, since Coil is the honestly only storyline actually connected to the world, since it actually continued 1.x's storyline.

Honestly, even during beta Yoshida admitted that the quests will be "less in quality" because the QA team complained there were never enough to actually make leveling a thing and they weren't going to bring back overworld grinding..so in order to make it a thing they have to do a mass quantity of quests even for the main storyline, and as such quality sadly has to suffer. Is it better than the shoved out the door quests of most generic MMOs? Sure, but can they do better? They damn well better since they're passing off the:

"Look forward to it! 3.0!"
"All our resources are going to Heavensward!"
"Every dev is busy with heavensward!"

Like back during 1.x when they continually said: "Look forward to 2.0! Everything is going toward 2.0!"

The dungeon you're in, unless you stumbled upon one for later in the game, is relevant to the storyline. You passing out pretzels for example, is not relevant to the storyline. What does that have to do with Dalamud's explosion? How does that teach me about bahamut? What does me giving you a snack tell me about what happened in the 5 years we were in limbo?

How does having me slay 5 coeurls for their skins then later bring you raw meat for a snack just so you can FINALLY get on with the actual quest relevant to the storyline have to do with it? Sure as catwho said sometimes you're a 'cheerleader' but I can safely say that's more along the lines of quests you find around the city or inside of a city..when you're off trying to topple a massive superpower....

And you (and your friends) are the only ones who can do so..you do not have them fetching your laundry....while the super power is blowing your country a new hole or about to (storywise) unleash something far worse than primal on you. You would never see Batman doing a county fair while the joker is massacring everyone in broad daylight.

So whether you want to believe it or not..there are differences and random encounters are part of the leveling in an offline game whereas you can't have the same style random encounters in an online game that has any optimized flow to it. That's why the filler quests are on a whole different level and why it makes a storyline feel longer than it truly is. Look at the updates since 2.0's, they've been significantly shorter and a bit more fetchy. When it makes sense..it's fine, that's part of why on the XI side, a lot of people disliked the Moogle storyline, because of the random HELM and such thrown in for the sake of it. It's just like...

Say if you get into a Ferrari and you want to push that thing hard and fast but the car decides: "How about we go 10 mph and stop for mcdonalds every 4 minutes?" That random ground to halt concept is what the filler quests does to the main storyline, by time you return to it you likely become pretty disinterested in it unless you already didn't mind that type of story content. Remove the filler content, it will still feel extremely short and since we're comparing a static storyline (offline) with the online one, we can only compare the 2.0 era storyline - which is significantly shorter than any FF storyline. It just "feels" longer artificially. If you throw in updates after it of course will feel longer since unlike FFIX, the storyline is done after you beat Necron. When you beat the Ascian(s) and whatever boss is in 2.5part2, there's still 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and so on storyline..it'll keep going.

But in raw story telling? There's still too much filler thrown in that jars you out of the action, it's why a lot of people hated Wind Waker..GO GET DEM TRIFORCE SHARDS! How jarring was that after all that happened, you're ready to get down and dirty with ganon..and boom...fetch quest from hell gets thrown in your lap. There's nothing "wrong" with fillers..it's just the way it's done in XIV is so jarring. Heck even in XI some of the fetch quests you get a cutscene during/after at the spot you went to do the fetch quest. That was more of a FF design than what ARR does.

The dungeon is relevant to the storyline, but a lot of the mobs inside these dungeons are not.

Let's see... I just visited that castle in the desert, and I'm on my way to the nearby town and that means I must go through the cave. Inside this cave are ridiculous numbers of bats, and snails. Snails move slow, why do I have to stop and fight them, again? What relevance do they have to the story? None, really. OK, after I get the town and it splits into three parts, one of the parts says I have to climb a mountain peak to talk to somebody's teacher. OK, sure. I'll do that. Oh wait, I'm being attacked by living plants that can somehow chase me down and/or make it hard for me to run away that appear to have no relevance to the story.

etc etc etc.

In some of these FFs, you spend more time killing fauna and flora, that you can forget what you're ACTUALLY trying to do.... or worse, get in the middle of a mazy dungeon, run into Three Bat Fight #3843 and then after the fight you go "Uh, which way was I going to go again?"

I'm in control of 4-5 heroes of the world... and I'm fighting hundreds of bats every time I go into a cave, lol. Or worse... insects. OK, the world just got "destroyed" and I'm on an island by myself. I'm supposed to go to a cape overlooking the sea. On the way there I have to stop and fight.....

Roaches.

OK. Didn't I just fight the Atma (Ultima) weapon like 10 minutes ago? Now I'm fighting a ROACH!? Oh wow, that Roach is putting up a damn good fight, too. Yeesh.



You need something from NPC. NPC isn't going to fork over something for free. You need that item, NPC needs his food. So NPC says "I'll give you this item if you give me food." If you want to save the world, you need that item he has. Quite relevant. It makes sense.



Everybody has their own day-to-day problems. YOU might be the savior of the world, but yet these people who have the stuff you need for your quests... they have problems of their own and sometimes they're either not capable or they just want some recompense. Let's say you're Joe NPC #39438. You somehow came in possession of a rare gem you found laying around. One day, a revered hero comes by asking for it. You're starving and you need food. Said hero has millions of gil handy. What do you do? Just hand over the gem? Of course not. "Hey, if you get me some food or pay me a thousand gil I'll give you this gem."

Sounds reasonable to me.



Eh, we can't really bring XI into this, lol. And I'm quite well aware of the myriad of reasons why random encounters don't work in an online RPG. What I AM saying, though, is the random encounters and the filler fetch quests both serve the same purpose and they both eat your time up. Something you've yet to refute.

At this point, you're just pulling out strawmans and irrelevant arguments.

The truth of the matter is, they both serve the same purpose and they both take up large gobs of your time and they can both be repetitive at times.



Try removing the random battles from a Single-player FF and you'll find the story is pretty d*mn short, too.



Wha? ARR has the same type of cutscenes/dialogue during/after at the spot you went to do the fetch quest, lol. Well I bet you probably spam-clicked or skipped cutscene and might not realize that (since XI did not allow you to do that usually).

Incorrect - A lot of them did not have not cutscene, the cutscene occurred in a separate quest in the chain. I know the story top to bottom, actually, which is why I know there's a lot of jumping around (that even the lore team admits if you read the forum) and a lot of broken quests in the sense a lot went nowhere pretty quickly or it reached a climax pretty damn quickly without substance in between due to the fetch quest fillers being part of the "actual story." I've yet to spam click in a story or skip cutscenes as..what's the point of playing a story based RPG if you do so? Try again :p



Do this in real life: Go inside of a cave and attract the attention of a hungry bear - I guarantee you will not only: A. Want to run away, or B. Try to kill it, because you know the problem comes with the fact you're:

A. Going into something's territory, thus hostility.
B. Not everything is going to want to hug and cuddle you unless by hugging and cuddling it actually means ripping the flesh off of your bones.

You're reaching pretty hard to draw that comparison. The difference is you're encountering wild life toward your goal, hostile MONSTERS in a cave/dungeon/ruins/etc, you were not tasked with specifically going to a cave JUST to kill 5 bats then heading back to the NPC for "story."



Problem is: These kind of quests should not be a part of the main storyline because it jars you out of the not only the action, but the plot. "Oh we heard there's an exiled garlean soldier living in the forest that can tell you more about that faction and even help you. Remember the interesting plot so far? Yeah forget about it, you're going on kill quests for the next 3 quests, I hope you're still interested in the plot after!"

Quests like that are usually called 'sidequests' in MMOs, as they're stuff to do on the side. Even in offline FF games when you need something from an NPC it's usually recounting something you've already picked up before that point, or something you'll be doing still related to the story. Me fetching you dinner is hardly related to the main story. That's the kind of filler that stretches a storyline artificially, which as said is fine as in an MMO they need to level you if it's quest based progression, but it feels longer purely because of that.



What also sounds reasonable is thinking:

"Hm, I should take up this hero's time, I mean based on what she or he says there's likely a death machine ready to blow us up and me being hungry will no longer be problem when I'm dead....naaah let's have him or her kill a bunch of ladybugs, imps then squirrels for a few hours then fetch the laundry!"

If quests were in real time, that NPC just brought about the end of the world by being greedy. I get what you're trying to say..but when it's part of the MAIN STORYLINE, it makes no sense as it offers nothing relating to the main storyline. As said,it's like if in offline FF games the main story you know and love or hate never happens because every NPC has you doing menial tasks that isn't relating to it. Seymour? Eh who's that? Every time you go to learn about him you're doing laundry or fetching someone dinner. You don't need to learn about Spira, Sin or Seymour. You don't need to know what Summoner's pilgrimage is. You don't need to learn about the Final Aeon and summoning, you need to fetch my god damn dinner.



Actually it isn't. And as lolgaxe pointed out, you're actually the one pulling out strawmans and irrelevant arguments. Random Encounters are not fillers nor fetch quests, because there are many areas in FF games and other RPGs where there are none and it's a literal straight A > B run the first time you're in certain areas. The reason it wasn't "refuted" is because you're stuck on considering the leveling format of offline games as filler.



Yeah, because every boss will end you pretty quickly, especially if it's a system based on experience gain, e.g AP/Sphere Grid/Crystarium etc. Random Battles doesn't increase nor decrease storyline length, it's separate from the storyline. It's not forced onto you. You are not prevented from progressing the storyline until you fetch NPC their dinner. I use that as an example because that's the definition of filler questing. You don't go from learning about a garlean invasion, seeing it in action, to fetching dinner then making an npc their winter coat because they're too lazy to then back to the action. That's a jarring transition for absolutely no reason.

Running into monsters/leveling up in an offline game isn't jarring to the storyline. As proven by many who actually play through FF games 100%, you never need to "grind" unless you're attempting a super OPTIONAL boss or content, since you're running the comparison that leveling = filler quests of an MMO. What you're basically saying is, all of the animes with filler episodes aren't fillers and are crucial to the plot of the storyline, even though they 99.9% of the time never existed in the manga, visual novel or light novel.

So when you're arguing length in comparison of offline and online, you have to take into consideration while doing the main storyline, A LOT of those quests aren't really worth being considered quests or even related to the story at hand. It's filler and like lockouts on end-game content, artificially extends the length of it. If you didn't skip cutscenes or dialog, you'd realize a lot of NPCs literally tell you they're just wasting your time.

Oh really?

You said...



I'll break that down and remove irrelevant parts of it:




What I said:



Convert it to the same formula:




You are saying that Thing A (Grinding) is a broad label that includes Thing B (Farming). I am saying that Thing A (Fighting) is a broad label that includes Thing B (Boxing).

The point I was making is that since Thing B is included in Thing A, you can indeed refer to Thing B by using Thing A's name. If I didn't suck at Photoshop, I'd draw you a two-circle Venn Diagram where Grinding is the large circle and Farming is a smaller circle inside of the bigger circle and then I'd do the same for Fighting (large circle) and Boxing (small circle).

For some reason, you're trying to reverse this on me, and claim that I was trying to use Farming to describe Grinding (or indeed, you tried to claim I was using Boxing to describe Fighting).

Just who is trying to pull the fallacy here?

Here's some more examples of the same type of thing:

Food (Broad Label), Pizza (specific type of food). You can indeed refer to Pizza as "food".
Car (Broad Label), BMW (specific type of car). You can indeed refer to a BMW as a "car".

Same goes for Grinding and Farming:

Grinding (Broad Label), Farming (specific type of grinding). I'm referring to it as "Grinding".
Fighting (Broad Label), Boxing (specific type of fighting). I'm referring to it as "Fighting" in my example.

Hio's negative bias towards the game is actually well documented on these and the FFXI's forums so there's really no way to excuse the tone saying.

However, when you remove that negative bias from her statments, Hio's actually right.

The game's story seems longer, because of the side quests.

Whether or not you view them as a nusance or a boon, side quests expand the story of the game. In may times these random quests that prevent you from progressing on are done so under the overarching premise of what you are as a character in the game: An adventurer.

Two cases in point are the Titan and Corethas story arcs. In both of these cases, even though you are deviated from the primary objective fairly hard, you are still meeting the overall objective because the obstacle in your way isn't some big bad (yet) it's the distrust of those whom you need something from. Those who are just wanting to buzz through the quests without paying attention or use the storyline as a means to the end to get cap level will find this trite and tedious. Those that sit back and relax to enjoy the stories unfolding before them find themselves with more than their fill.

The main story is meant to facilitate the levels from 1-50, and therefore the fetch quest within the main story facilitate that, while expanding on the lore of the areas you are in. For Example, the U-Tribe - part of the Titan Arc. It's out of the way and there's no Leves there - which really if the main story didn't bring you there, there'd be no point to go. Yet, the main story brings you there, the level requirements encourage you to do the quests around the area, and the quests themselves expand the lore of Tribal Seekers of the Sun by telling the tales of those who are a part of the U-Tribe.

And no, not all of it is serious.

But it all enforces the over all point. You go to a town in another FF game, and you might get a general overall story, but you won't get many of the tales of the people there. In an MMO, especially in FFXIV, you stay a while and get a better feel for it all.

That's why the story feels longer: The story lingers at the small stops more. I personally enjoy it, and I feel FFXIV does a better job at the pacing of it than most others I've experienced.

As far as putting in ways to slow down players and keep them subscribing longer, it could be worse. Remember those ToAU missions where you had to wait until after JST midnight to move on to the next quest?

I like the way the quest/story line are done in FFXIV far better than FFXI. I always had to use a wiki to figure out to do next in FFXI. Even after reading a wiki I still didnt know how they got that sometimes or how anyone ever figured that out. In this game it is pretty straight forward, I do sometimes feel like a slave more than some hero though.. Why am delivering glue or what ever, could you send someone else for that. There is allot of unnecessary running around. I do like the story in FFXI better most of the time.. I still want to know why every little thing wants to kill me even the smallest bunny or mouse in FFXIV.

Anyway I am hoping things improve with the expansion and I think they will.. They have had more time.

Catwho I didn't like the time restrictions on some of those FFXI quests.. I dont know why they were left on years latter either.




Edited, Mar 5th 2015 9:46am by Nashred

Seriously. Even now, I alt tab every 30 seconds whenever trying to accomplish something new in that game.

And no surprised it was one of the most hated FF games because it's entire premise was to remove everything that made an RPG an RPG at the time in order to introduce RPGs to kids. That was honestly the selling point. So while in design it wasn't terrible..there's a reason they never went back to that format lol. Even XIII went the more 'easy route' and as usual seems to be equally as hated even though the progression was that of any other FF game and if you think about pacing, it actually matches FFVI's pacing and A > B progression until world of ruin.



Yeah ToAU and WoTG was when they were starting to roll out XIV 1.0, so a lot of it was filler waits to spread out the pacing between updates due to lack of development on XI at the time. It was actually very rare in Zilart and CoP, CoP had them due to them splitting the whole story in 3 large chunks, with 'One to be Feared' being the stopping for for 2 updates and was the wall for many that didn't have the skill or crew to get through that fight.



Also have to take into consideration people found out what to do as the wikis didn't update themselves and funny enough, most of XIV's content is: "Please read a guide, know how to speed run or go check youtube." So nothing has changed, aside the community toxicity, as I guarantee unless you strictly do content only with friends, people will very, very rarely be accommodating of you going into established content blind and "i learn by doing, so I don't care if I wipe you guys 70 times."






Edited, Mar 6th 2015 6:40am by Theonehio

I've never encountered a bad reaction to someone saying they were new to a dungeon. Most people I've met will either explain a fight up front or explain what someone did wrong after a wipe. The rest just stay silent and cut themselves or something, I don't know. But I've never seen a single person fly off the handle just because someone was new to a 4-man dungeon.

I remember running one of the new EX roulette dungeons and a dps who was new requested that we not spoil the fights for him. It was Wanderer's Palace HM, so it wasn't really a problem. This could have been messier in other dungeons.

I am going to have to say that it's a little of column A and a little of column B for me. I prefer it if someone has some idea of what they're doing if it's a fight where not knowing can cause a wipe. EX Primals and Coil are where you should have some idea if you're not going with friends or in a PF group for learning/clear. "Some idea" is far from "everything memorized" though, and how would they even know if everything's not memorized? I was in a Coil Turn 5 DF where it was clear that one of the players had no clue of what he was doing, and he continually messed up conflags even after we told him what to do. That was incredibly frustrating, but nobody blew up at him.

But if someone actually went into a dungeon/etc. and said (to quote Theonehio) "i learn by doing, so I don't care if I wipe you guys 70 times" then I'd think that was going to be a waste of my time. Your time is important to you, and my time is equally important to me; that statement shows that you don't care about my time.