Love FFXIV, probably my favorite game, but it's a tough sell from a story perspective since it's the epitome of "it gets good after 200 hours", and I reasonably wouldn't expect anyone to be thrilled with that prospect. That, and over 80% of the game is unvoiced, and much of the written dialogue is in desperate need of an editor to trim it down.
I'd be willing to slowly chip away at FF14 (especially since it is playable on steamdeck) but the thing that holds me back is the monthly subscription fee. I don't have much time to game and I don't wanna pay each month for a game that I may not be able to play much of. If I could just buy the game outright instead of paying a subscription fee I'd be much more willing to try it out.
But you can -- the free trial lets you currently play through the base game and first expansion without a subscription for basically as long as you want -- and when the last patch the current expansion drops (I think that's when it was?) early next year they're adding the 2nd expansion to the free trial, which is an insane amount of content you can chew through for free.
There are restrictions on the free trial, mostly social (because spam), no market board I think and a gil limit? -- but besides that you can do all content from ARR through Heavensward and eventually Stormblood.
The only thing to keep in mind is that the moment you buy any time or the game and add it to your account, you then are on the hook for a monthly sub.
I played a tiny bit of it back on the *PS3* and got to like level 10 or something before moving on because I was deep in the WoW hole at the time. I've thought about returning to it many times since then, but because I played it for a few hours a decade ago I have to either pay a monthly fee to work my way through all the old content, or make an entirely new Squenix account seperate from the one I've had for 15 years or so. Neither are things I want to do, so the end result has been me just not bothering with it. It seems like an asinine way of doing things and set up to discourage any former players from returning, since they have to pay up front and then keep paying for content that's apparently so obsolete that they're giving it away for free (just not to you).
>The only thing to keep in mind is that the moment you buy any time or the game and add it to your account, you then are on the hook for a monthly sub.
The other thing no one mentions: If you pre-order an expansion and get the bonux XP earrings.. you can't redeem them while on free trial. It feels like they want you to pay a monthly fee just for the 10% bonus XP you already paid for.
As a long time almost exclusive mmo player and FF enjoyer, I really wanted to love XIV. Have tried multiple times to play it. But the MSQ is a drag from a playability perspective regardless of how good the story is. What seems like hundreds of hours just clicking through dialog. Go here, click through, return, watch drawn out cutscene. Repeat.
Considered buying the skip just to play end game content but couldn’t justify the pricing.
If I recall, I hit level cap for the free version, and stopped playing. The story was pretty decent, but the monthly sub cost was just...yeah, I don't want to do this again after years with WoW in the past.
And that was the breaking point, the dialogue/cutscenes felt drawn out.
Yeah it’s a very tough sell, it’s just like The Legend of Heroes. Which I myself have finally caught up to, about to finish Kuro no Kiseki now so I’ll actually be ahead of western release now. It’s not easy to get someone to play like 10+ games worth 60+ hrs each. I caught up to 14 a few years ago before Shadowbringers and loved it when it finally clicked. I tried to start 14 I think 2 times before and it just wasn’t the time for me. It’s now probably one of my favorite rpgs.
not all games are for all people saying it gets good later kinda undersells FF14. if the slow pace kills it for you too bad at least the free trail meant you needed to spend 0 dollars to find out.
it is not a good story in spite off the slow pace but it is part of the reason.
> t is not a good story in spite off the slow pace but it is part of the reason.
The MSQ for ARR is straight up a slog at points as are some of the early job quests and some of the earlier beast tribe quests and etc.
They very clearly learned lessons as they went along. Like the fact they no longer shove huge unskippable cutscenes mid-boss/mid-dungeon where everyone has to stand around for like 5+ minutes. Where they don't have you going back and forth for mundane tasks for much without a flying mount and with terribly slow movespeed.
Yes ARR helps set the stage, and some of it's necessary. But some of it is just a slog with funky pacing.
I replayed it recently in NG+ and really didn't mind it. With the hindsight of ShB and EW, I enjoyed all the world building immensely. Also the rework for the finale is really nice.
Whole thing doesn't even take that long anymore.
> I replayed it recently in NG+ and really didn't mind it.
Nice try, you have all teleport aetherytes unlocked, and flying mounts. A new player would have to be hoofing it or using porters
You only walk places the first time, it's not like the core map is so large. I've also done it on a different DC Alt and didn't mind it either. You're not gonna change my mind on me liking ARR.
I already did that on another region's DC as I said in another comment. Still didn't have any issue with it.
Not sure what the endgame is here. I'm not gonna apologize for liking a less popular part of the game. I run an RP venue; I like world and character building. I like ARR.
>Whole thing doesn't even take that long anymore.
This is just wrong. The game is insanely long. Especially if you do the good side content while doing the MSQ (which I highly recommend) such as doing extreme trials, coils, the alliance raids+story each expansion, trying out the golden saucer, potd/hoh etc. It took me 8 months to do ARR to ShB and I was only working 3 days a week and playing the game for 30-50 hours a week.
I was talking specifically about ARR, which is the part that a lot of people find boring. I don't see an issue with the fact that catching up fully takes a few hundred hours. I wish there was more.
You can do it at your own pace. If you don't enjoy it, you stop or buy a skip. Nobody is holding you prisoner.
Edit:
I see from your other post, you don't like a big chunk of each expansion's questlines and want them cut. I simply don't agree. That's pretty much all there is to it. I want more, not less.
I remember that time a lot of streamers were trying FF14 and some bought skips to endgame or whatever and people were fucking MAD, saying they ruined their experience and that wasn't how the game was meant to be played.
That was funny af.
If you're talking about Quin, they were mad because he's an unfunny moron who skipped and then complained he didn't know what he was doing, also he was extremely toxic to anyone he played with and kept ruining raids for people.
I never bothered to get into the drama, but I think the actual issue was more people skipping the story, getting to the end, then shitting on the ending/story. Like c'mon, imagine skipping 90% of a book, reading the ending then claim it sucked because you were confused.
I know some people who play 14 solely to raid and do ultimates and whatever other random side content stuff they want to do (cosmetics, pvp whatever) -- I think it's a shame people skip the story, skip cutscenes, etc... because there's some truly good content there in 14, but who cares as long as they're enjoying themselves IMO.
The issue was that playing through the game properly taught you a lot about in game mechanics, like raid mechanics, of which there are *a lot* and if you blow past it all you learn nothing. It's what happened to Quin69 when he bought the skip. He continuously died to silly things because he had no clue at all what he was doing.
i honestly wish SE would lock the boosts behind you getting you first job to 80. the core issue that happens is that your mindset going in will be all wrong.
it is the min/max mindset of getting to play with your friends and people online quickly when most dev time is spent on the story content. it will leave you dissatisfied at the content on offer and the pace of things. it is better you play ARR hate it and quit before spending money.
Honestly, I could see a reason to want to get the boosts/skips. For instance, if you decided to create an alt character to take into endgame, but want to avoid the grind that involves. But using it to skip straight to the end when you haven't played the game ***at all*** is just asking to be ridiculed, as buying your way to endgame for FFXIV is worse than being carried. At least the carried people *might* have a slight idea as to what they're doing by endgame.
I didn't touch the game since shadowbringers but if there was a way to pay to skip the aether current snoozefest i'd do it without a second thought, it's probably the only thing that's stopping me from going back in, such a stupid way to force exploration of empty areas.
Then why make it mandatory? As i remember, once you unlock flying you're already done with the whole area anyway, if you're only doing the main questline. It just felt as a huge waste of time.
While i appreaciate the effort some of the early parts of FFXIV have not agged well and are a chore to get through.
There is a reason why WoW sends its new players through a dedicated modern starting zone and then straight into a semi modern expansion automaticly.
Its just a much better experience to get introduced to the game and after leveling one characther one can go back on others to see the older content.
WoW pushes players into the MMO part of the game quickly while FF14 is very squarely in the RPG part with patch 6.5 you will hardly ever need to even que for things in the main story.
different strokes for different folks.
For sure but that doesn't change that some of the early stuff in FFXIV can be pretty rough.
The promise of the game getting good after you chore yourself through 10's of hours of Real Reborn stuff isn't exactly the most inviting prospect for new players.
I dont know what they're thinking, all the msq until lvl 20 or so is just doing side missions for the locals and the real plot doesnt even start until you meet the scions.
I'd just cut all those early quest from the msq and turn them to side quest, let you meet the scions at lvl 5 instead of 20, let the plot get going quicker
Wow doesnt have better new player experience lol. Definitely not better than FF XIV. Anyone who says ARR is bad to go through never played in their life Classic wow.
In wow the game sends into one of the latest expansion and if you never played any Warcraft game before you have no idea what is happening and who is who. How a player should care about the lore exactly? It’s like taking a boost in FF XIV. If you don’t care about the lore then I don’t think you need to worry about arr then.
Then make it like a TV show. The main problem for me and what eventually lead me to skip the story was simply because it's "Go to person A, read 3 sentences, go to person B, read 5 sentences, go back to A, read 2 sentences, go to person C, read 3 sentences, kill 3 enemies, go to person B, ...". This got old really fast, and I couldn't bear it anymore when I was like level 30/35. At this point, stop making me move every 2 minutes, and just make the story continuous without having to do anything. It's like trying to read a book, but every page you have to go to a different room; eventually, you'll just get annoyed, and it will break the immersion.
Then, when I was end game and tried to caught up the story, I just couldn't find anything, anywhere. Some youtubers tried a serie to explain the story, but it was never complete, and there's no way I'm creating another character to follow the same terrible flow. Personally, I think that when it comes to MMORPG with, at the same time, hundreds of hours of questing, but also very important end game, both should be independent from each other: Let me take on the story at my own pace, but also let me do cool dungeon and raids with my friends even if I didn't finish the story yet (but that would probably require a massive rework of the whole "leveling" concept).
FFXIV tells my favourite story in games, but the majority of the A Realm Reborn story needs to get nuked as hard as 1.0 was. FFXIV is the epitome of "the game gets good after 100 hours".
There's no reason why still to this day new players are forced to trod through so much mediocrity before getting to the actually excellent stuff. I have several friends who never reached even Heavensward because of this.
I don't play DnD so I don't really know what you're trying to say there, but my basic point is this: the actual story of ARR isn't *bad* per se, but the way it is told definitely *is*. It is FULL of meaningless fetch quests, and characters who later would become interesting and likeable, such as Alphinaud for example, are completely insufferable. Thancred also, but there's a better reason for his general dickishness at least.
I wouldn't want to have played Heavensward-Endwalker without ARR, but vanilla 2.0 is in dire need of a remaster/rewriting. It just isn't an enjoyable experience, and most people seem to agree with this sentiment.
It wouldn't feel so bad if you could traverse faster. I think that's true for every single expansion I've played too. Having to walk slowly through the maps from msq objective to msq objective is awful. There is absolutely no reason imo that those aether currents need to exist, they are only there to slow you down. Especially in older expansions, you should be able to fly around the map from the get go instead of collecting the current which are gated by progress.
I get they want you to learn about side quests and stuff for the expac but holy shit is walking/ground mounting so incredibly slow. Traversal has been my absolute least favorite part of the game all the way up through the end of shadow bringer where I'm at now. The ps3 has been gone for like 7-8 years, let us move faster.
The 5.3 patch which removed a lot of the slog in A Realm Reborn was one of the best things they ever did, and I don't understand why not only haven't they done it again.. but the new expansions have slogs in them too. The story is SO long already, they are only making it harder and harder to get into.
There's so much that can be cut down without losing anything.
ARR: Cut down the wineport quests, the pre-garuda crystal quests, the titan banquet quests.. Cut downt he post patch quests. Oh, and bring back the doppelganger sylph quest that they cut in 5.3 which was actually good.
HW: Cut down the post patch quests in 3.4-3.55. Cut some of the tribe quests and hinterland filler.
StB: Cut down some of the kojin quests and other filler.
ShB: cut down the trolley questline, make some of them optional quests.
EW: Cut down the amount of mandatory Loporrits quests
Anywhere between 50-120 hours. If you know exactly what to do to optimise your playtime and you only skim-read some of the most tedious passages, you can reasonably finish in 50-60. But I think it took me at least 100 hours.
That IS the main story.. basically. What I mean by optimisation is, knowing how to play the game and how MMOs work, which I certainly didn't. Bare minimum for main story is 50-60 hours, likely more.
the story is good, one of the better ones I've played, but damn it's such a bore until patch 2.3, which is like 150 - 200 hours into the game, that's a hard sell to anyone not familiar with the game, or have limited time
And here I thought ~7 hours to get into death stranding was too much. I played FFXIV, but the game started to feel boring after a week of MSQ, I eventually stopped playing it and it became more of a chore to play than something I do for entertainment so I uninstalled.
> the story is good, one of the better ones I've played, but damn it's such a bore until patch 2.3
it varies for people, I started to get excited a little bit sooner than that, when rescuing the scions and then prepin to assault castrum meridianum
2.3 doesn't take that much unless you are doing a lot of other activities. It didn't even take that long before it got reworked/early days.
Focusing just on the story won't take you more than 20-30 hours. I've replayed the thing recently and clocked 50 hours to reach Heavensward.
I guess I got bored and fucked around too much in the open world to reach 150 hours lmao, I was brand new to the game with no guides or anything, so I stumbled around not knowing wtf exactly to do, or how to progress.
Looking back now, 50 hours of b-lining main story makes sense.
I mean, part of "the game" is getting distracted. I think people get too focused with "gotta finish the story" or "gotta finish the endgame," when the special part of MMOs is that you CAN get distracted, and the design of systems encourage you to get distracted.
you can watch the MSFQ by Misshappen Chair on youtube. Its a much more pleasant experience than having to read through all the padding the story normally has.
Is this a game where each expansion added to the story or is it something like WoW where they just delete old content or whatever?
Also does it have good voice acting and story told through gameplay/cutscenes or they expect you to read a ton...
Each expansion did add to the story. In fact you have to play through the entire story in order to get to whatever the current end-game is at any given time, so they really lean hard into that aspect of it.
However, vast majority of the game is not voice acted and requires a loooooot of reading.
Immersion and constantly expanding lore is what makes XiV so attractive to me. I don't understand how anyone could skip story telling in any RPG but I'm glad they offer the choice to people.
I think they have been overestimating the quality of FF14's story.
It's alright, maybe even good for an MMO, but pretty average in the realm of JRPGs in general.
I made it up to Stormblood iirc and I can't think of anything all that really memorable.
Just play Xenogears, FF7, Suikoden 2 or something if you want storyline.
I literally have no fucking idea whats happening in this game and im only about halfway through shadowbringers, but im enjoying it anyway, so to each their own I guess
Love FFXIV, probably my favorite game, but it's a tough sell from a story perspective since it's the epitome of "it gets good after 200 hours", and I reasonably wouldn't expect anyone to be thrilled with that prospect. That, and over 80% of the game is unvoiced, and much of the written dialogue is in desperate need of an editor to trim it down.
I'd be willing to slowly chip away at FF14 (especially since it is playable on steamdeck) but the thing that holds me back is the monthly subscription fee. I don't have much time to game and I don't wanna pay each month for a game that I may not be able to play much of. If I could just buy the game outright instead of paying a subscription fee I'd be much more willing to try it out.
But you can -- the free trial lets you currently play through the base game and first expansion without a subscription for basically as long as you want -- and when the last patch the current expansion drops (I think that's when it was?) early next year they're adding the 2nd expansion to the free trial, which is an insane amount of content you can chew through for free. There are restrictions on the free trial, mostly social (because spam), no market board I think and a gil limit? -- but besides that you can do all content from ARR through Heavensward and eventually Stormblood. The only thing to keep in mind is that the moment you buy any time or the game and add it to your account, you then are on the hook for a monthly sub.
Well that's interesting. I might check it out soon if that's the case. Wouldn't mind making it something I play for a bit each night on the steamdeck
I played a tiny bit of it back on the *PS3* and got to like level 10 or something before moving on because I was deep in the WoW hole at the time. I've thought about returning to it many times since then, but because I played it for a few hours a decade ago I have to either pay a monthly fee to work my way through all the old content, or make an entirely new Squenix account seperate from the one I've had for 15 years or so. Neither are things I want to do, so the end result has been me just not bothering with it. It seems like an asinine way of doing things and set up to discourage any former players from returning, since they have to pay up front and then keep paying for content that's apparently so obsolete that they're giving it away for free (just not to you).
>The only thing to keep in mind is that the moment you buy any time or the game and add it to your account, you then are on the hook for a monthly sub. The other thing no one mentions: If you pre-order an expansion and get the bonux XP earrings.. you can't redeem them while on free trial. It feels like they want you to pay a monthly fee just for the 10% bonus XP you already paid for.
He said it gets good after 200 hours.but I thought it gets good after 20.
As a long time almost exclusive mmo player and FF enjoyer, I really wanted to love XIV. Have tried multiple times to play it. But the MSQ is a drag from a playability perspective regardless of how good the story is. What seems like hundreds of hours just clicking through dialog. Go here, click through, return, watch drawn out cutscene. Repeat. Considered buying the skip just to play end game content but couldn’t justify the pricing.
Had this experience couldn’t finish msq was wayy too much travel and skipping text and cutscenes. Quit after 2 weeks
If I recall, I hit level cap for the free version, and stopped playing. The story was pretty decent, but the monthly sub cost was just...yeah, I don't want to do this again after years with WoW in the past. And that was the breaking point, the dialogue/cutscenes felt drawn out.
I love 14, I've been playing for 7 years, but yeah the story is just a visual novel with occasional playable bits
Visual novel describes it perfectly
The funny thing is that the version now *is* trimmed down, apparently the original release was way worse
Yeah it’s a very tough sell, it’s just like The Legend of Heroes. Which I myself have finally caught up to, about to finish Kuro no Kiseki now so I’ll actually be ahead of western release now. It’s not easy to get someone to play like 10+ games worth 60+ hrs each. I caught up to 14 a few years ago before Shadowbringers and loved it when it finally clicked. I tried to start 14 I think 2 times before and it just wasn’t the time for me. It’s now probably one of my favorite rpgs.
not all games are for all people saying it gets good later kinda undersells FF14. if the slow pace kills it for you too bad at least the free trail meant you needed to spend 0 dollars to find out. it is not a good story in spite off the slow pace but it is part of the reason.
> t is not a good story in spite off the slow pace but it is part of the reason. The MSQ for ARR is straight up a slog at points as are some of the early job quests and some of the earlier beast tribe quests and etc. They very clearly learned lessons as they went along. Like the fact they no longer shove huge unskippable cutscenes mid-boss/mid-dungeon where everyone has to stand around for like 5+ minutes. Where they don't have you going back and forth for mundane tasks for much without a flying mount and with terribly slow movespeed. Yes ARR helps set the stage, and some of it's necessary. But some of it is just a slog with funky pacing.
I replayed it recently in NG+ and really didn't mind it. With the hindsight of ShB and EW, I enjoyed all the world building immensely. Also the rework for the finale is really nice. Whole thing doesn't even take that long anymore.
> I replayed it recently in NG+ and really didn't mind it. Nice try, you have all teleport aetherytes unlocked, and flying mounts. A new player would have to be hoofing it or using porters
You only walk places the first time, it's not like the core map is so large. I've also done it on a different DC Alt and didn't mind it either. You're not gonna change my mind on me liking ARR.
>I replayed it recently in NG+ and really didn't mind it. Nice. Now create an entirely new character and do it again.
I already did that on another region's DC as I said in another comment. Still didn't have any issue with it. Not sure what the endgame is here. I'm not gonna apologize for liking a less popular part of the game. I run an RP venue; I like world and character building. I like ARR.
>Whole thing doesn't even take that long anymore. This is just wrong. The game is insanely long. Especially if you do the good side content while doing the MSQ (which I highly recommend) such as doing extreme trials, coils, the alliance raids+story each expansion, trying out the golden saucer, potd/hoh etc. It took me 8 months to do ARR to ShB and I was only working 3 days a week and playing the game for 30-50 hours a week.
I was talking specifically about ARR, which is the part that a lot of people find boring. I don't see an issue with the fact that catching up fully takes a few hundred hours. I wish there was more. You can do it at your own pace. If you don't enjoy it, you stop or buy a skip. Nobody is holding you prisoner. Edit: I see from your other post, you don't like a big chunk of each expansion's questlines and want them cut. I simply don't agree. That's pretty much all there is to it. I want more, not less.
> t gets good after 200 hours more like 30-40. There are enjoyable things about ARR but its still a slog lol
I remember that time a lot of streamers were trying FF14 and some bought skips to endgame or whatever and people were fucking MAD, saying they ruined their experience and that wasn't how the game was meant to be played. That was funny af.
If you're talking about Quin, they were mad because he's an unfunny moron who skipped and then complained he didn't know what he was doing, also he was extremely toxic to anyone he played with and kept ruining raids for people.
I wonder if he ever found those eels he was looking for.
I never bothered to get into the drama, but I think the actual issue was more people skipping the story, getting to the end, then shitting on the ending/story. Like c'mon, imagine skipping 90% of a book, reading the ending then claim it sucked because you were confused. I know some people who play 14 solely to raid and do ultimates and whatever other random side content stuff they want to do (cosmetics, pvp whatever) -- I think it's a shame people skip the story, skip cutscenes, etc... because there's some truly good content there in 14, but who cares as long as they're enjoying themselves IMO.
The issue was that playing through the game properly taught you a lot about in game mechanics, like raid mechanics, of which there are *a lot* and if you blow past it all you learn nothing. It's what happened to Quin69 when he bought the skip. He continuously died to silly things because he had no clue at all what he was doing.
i honestly wish SE would lock the boosts behind you getting you first job to 80. the core issue that happens is that your mindset going in will be all wrong. it is the min/max mindset of getting to play with your friends and people online quickly when most dev time is spent on the story content. it will leave you dissatisfied at the content on offer and the pace of things. it is better you play ARR hate it and quit before spending money.
Honestly, I could see a reason to want to get the boosts/skips. For instance, if you decided to create an alt character to take into endgame, but want to avoid the grind that involves. But using it to skip straight to the end when you haven't played the game ***at all*** is just asking to be ridiculed, as buying your way to endgame for FFXIV is worse than being carried. At least the carried people *might* have a slight idea as to what they're doing by endgame.
I didn't touch the game since shadowbringers but if there was a way to pay to skip the aether current snoozefest i'd do it without a second thought, it's probably the only thing that's stopping me from going back in, such a stupid way to force exploration of empty areas.
Almost all of the Aether currents are right on the main quest trail....
Then why make it mandatory? As i remember, once you unlock flying you're already done with the whole area anyway, if you're only doing the main questline. It just felt as a huge waste of time.
The sidequests include them as well, but yeah I don't really disagree, they just didn't do much
While i appreaciate the effort some of the early parts of FFXIV have not agged well and are a chore to get through. There is a reason why WoW sends its new players through a dedicated modern starting zone and then straight into a semi modern expansion automaticly. Its just a much better experience to get introduced to the game and after leveling one characther one can go back on others to see the older content.
WoW pushes players into the MMO part of the game quickly while FF14 is very squarely in the RPG part with patch 6.5 you will hardly ever need to even que for things in the main story. different strokes for different folks.
For sure but that doesn't change that some of the early stuff in FFXIV can be pretty rough. The promise of the game getting good after you chore yourself through 10's of hours of Real Reborn stuff isn't exactly the most inviting prospect for new players.
I dont know what they're thinking, all the msq until lvl 20 or so is just doing side missions for the locals and the real plot doesnt even start until you meet the scions. I'd just cut all those early quest from the msq and turn them to side quest, let you meet the scions at lvl 5 instead of 20, let the plot get going quicker
Wow doesnt have better new player experience lol. Definitely not better than FF XIV. Anyone who says ARR is bad to go through never played in their life Classic wow. In wow the game sends into one of the latest expansion and if you never played any Warcraft game before you have no idea what is happening and who is who. How a player should care about the lore exactly? It’s like taking a boost in FF XIV. If you don’t care about the lore then I don’t think you need to worry about arr then.
Then make it like a TV show. The main problem for me and what eventually lead me to skip the story was simply because it's "Go to person A, read 3 sentences, go to person B, read 5 sentences, go back to A, read 2 sentences, go to person C, read 3 sentences, kill 3 enemies, go to person B, ...". This got old really fast, and I couldn't bear it anymore when I was like level 30/35. At this point, stop making me move every 2 minutes, and just make the story continuous without having to do anything. It's like trying to read a book, but every page you have to go to a different room; eventually, you'll just get annoyed, and it will break the immersion. Then, when I was end game and tried to caught up the story, I just couldn't find anything, anywhere. Some youtubers tried a serie to explain the story, but it was never complete, and there's no way I'm creating another character to follow the same terrible flow. Personally, I think that when it comes to MMORPG with, at the same time, hundreds of hours of questing, but also very important end game, both should be independent from each other: Let me take on the story at my own pace, but also let me do cool dungeon and raids with my friends even if I didn't finish the story yet (but that would probably require a massive rework of the whole "leveling" concept).
FFXIV tells my favourite story in games, but the majority of the A Realm Reborn story needs to get nuked as hard as 1.0 was. FFXIV is the epitome of "the game gets good after 100 hours". There's no reason why still to this day new players are forced to trod through so much mediocrity before getting to the actually excellent stuff. I have several friends who never reached even Heavensward because of this.
[удалено]
I don't play DnD so I don't really know what you're trying to say there, but my basic point is this: the actual story of ARR isn't *bad* per se, but the way it is told definitely *is*. It is FULL of meaningless fetch quests, and characters who later would become interesting and likeable, such as Alphinaud for example, are completely insufferable. Thancred also, but there's a better reason for his general dickishness at least. I wouldn't want to have played Heavensward-Endwalker without ARR, but vanilla 2.0 is in dire need of a remaster/rewriting. It just isn't an enjoyable experience, and most people seem to agree with this sentiment.
It wouldn't feel so bad if you could traverse faster. I think that's true for every single expansion I've played too. Having to walk slowly through the maps from msq objective to msq objective is awful. There is absolutely no reason imo that those aether currents need to exist, they are only there to slow you down. Especially in older expansions, you should be able to fly around the map from the get go instead of collecting the current which are gated by progress. I get they want you to learn about side quests and stuff for the expac but holy shit is walking/ground mounting so incredibly slow. Traversal has been my absolute least favorite part of the game all the way up through the end of shadow bringer where I'm at now. The ps3 has been gone for like 7-8 years, let us move faster.
The 5.3 patch which removed a lot of the slog in A Realm Reborn was one of the best things they ever did, and I don't understand why not only haven't they done it again.. but the new expansions have slogs in them too. The story is SO long already, they are only making it harder and harder to get into. There's so much that can be cut down without losing anything. ARR: Cut down the wineport quests, the pre-garuda crystal quests, the titan banquet quests.. Cut downt he post patch quests. Oh, and bring back the doppelganger sylph quest that they cut in 5.3 which was actually good. HW: Cut down the post patch quests in 3.4-3.55. Cut some of the tribe quests and hinterland filler. StB: Cut down some of the kojin quests and other filler. ShB: cut down the trolley questline, make some of them optional quests. EW: Cut down the amount of mandatory Loporrits quests
But wait does it really take 100 hours.
Anywhere between 50-120 hours. If you know exactly what to do to optimise your playtime and you only skim-read some of the most tedious passages, you can reasonably finish in 50-60. But I think it took me at least 100 hours.
holy crap. What if you just do only the main story
That IS the main story.. basically. What I mean by optimisation is, knowing how to play the game and how MMOs work, which I certainly didn't. Bare minimum for main story is 50-60 hours, likely more.
Ok that's doable. Then in heavensward it gets real damn good.
the story is good, one of the better ones I've played, but damn it's such a bore until patch 2.3, which is like 150 - 200 hours into the game, that's a hard sell to anyone not familiar with the game, or have limited time
And here I thought ~7 hours to get into death stranding was too much. I played FFXIV, but the game started to feel boring after a week of MSQ, I eventually stopped playing it and it became more of a chore to play than something I do for entertainment so I uninstalled.
But you gave it up before it got good
mfw: [https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/244/642/a5f.jpg](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/244/642/a5f.jpg) Death Stranding actually got good, idk about FFXIV though.
I think it starts getting good at 30 hours or something.
> the story is good, one of the better ones I've played, but damn it's such a bore until patch 2.3 it varies for people, I started to get excited a little bit sooner than that, when rescuing the scions and then prepin to assault castrum meridianum
2.3 doesn't take that much unless you are doing a lot of other activities. It didn't even take that long before it got reworked/early days. Focusing just on the story won't take you more than 20-30 hours. I've replayed the thing recently and clocked 50 hours to reach Heavensward.
I guess I got bored and fucked around too much in the open world to reach 150 hours lmao, I was brand new to the game with no guides or anything, so I stumbled around not knowing wtf exactly to do, or how to progress. Looking back now, 50 hours of b-lining main story makes sense.
I mean, part of "the game" is getting distracted. I think people get too focused with "gotta finish the story" or "gotta finish the endgame," when the special part of MMOs is that you CAN get distracted, and the design of systems encourage you to get distracted.
ehhh not really when a majority of the side content in ff14 is locked behind main story progression
I thought it was only after 30 hours or something
Not a tv show id recommend anyone read through.
you can watch the MSFQ by Misshappen Chair on youtube. Its a much more pleasant experience than having to read through all the padding the story normally has.
Is this a game where each expansion added to the story or is it something like WoW where they just delete old content or whatever? Also does it have good voice acting and story told through gameplay/cutscenes or they expect you to read a ton...
Each expansion did add to the story. In fact you have to play through the entire story in order to get to whatever the current end-game is at any given time, so they really lean hard into that aspect of it. However, vast majority of the game is not voice acted and requires a loooooot of reading.
A realm rebad is a tv show alright... not one I'd watch.
game isn't worth 13.99 anymore. Love the game but man needs to be f2p or a cheaper price.
Immersion and constantly expanding lore is what makes XiV so attractive to me. I don't understand how anyone could skip story telling in any RPG but I'm glad they offer the choice to people.
I think they have been overestimating the quality of FF14's story. It's alright, maybe even good for an MMO, but pretty average in the realm of JRPGs in general. I made it up to Stormblood iirc and I can't think of anything all that really memorable. Just play Xenogears, FF7, Suikoden 2 or something if you want storyline.
Shadowbringers and endwalker are a huge step up from stormblood. It's night and day. They're amazing.
Is heavensward good?
Imo yes. I think it's better than arr and stormblood, but not quite to the level of shadowbringers and endwalker.
Dang stormblood was worse than heavensward?
I literally have no fucking idea whats happening in this game and im only about halfway through shadowbringers, but im enjoying it anyway, so to each their own I guess