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i'm gonna be real here, overworld quests with "combat" are universally garbage in every single mmo, so the story just being a visual novel interspersed with dungeons and trials is by far the best outcome
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Sep 13, 2023 00:35
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Truga posted:i'm gonna be real here, overworld quests with "combat" are universally garbage in every single mmo, so the story just being a visual novel interspersed with dungeons and trials is by far the best outcome I mean when I played WoW I played to grind those bear asses, so different opinion on the issue I guess.
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Sep 13, 2023 00:37
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This might be controversial, but I really don't like how they changed Eric the Flimflam's voice actor in the 19th expansion of FFXIV. The way he voice acts eating those potatoes just does not have the same gravitas.
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Sep 13, 2023 00:38
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Eimi posted:I mean when I played WoW I played to grind those bear asses, so different opinion on the issue I guess. for me that's worst of both worlds because overworld combat tends to be basic enough for the lowest common denominator to handle it solo this means that unless you find challenges for yourself like "can i pull 60 of these guys and aoe them down" or "can i murder 10k of these per hour", it just isn't fun to play, and quests telling you to get 10 bears and then move onto the next room run counter to that
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Sep 13, 2023 00:47
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Eimi posted:When you're into the story, the leveling experience is loving great. When you are not, it's so much torture. Because the leveling experience is just watch cutscene. Run to watch other cutscene. Maybe, if you're very lucky, you'll give two mobs before watching a cutscene. And then do the appointed dungeon at the set level. Aside from the dungeons, which at least look nice but honestly every dungeon feels like every other dungeon, it's so much tedium if the story doesn't grab you, and I hated EW's story. It's also weird because I don't think 14's combat for overworld stuff is at all interesting either, so it's not like I'm even enjoying the momentary combat breaks you get. It's great when you think of abilities as resources to solve encounters or dungeon runs like "is the party surviving, what health is the boss at, where's the window to hit CDs, do I get to spam AOE," and so on. The visual effects are stylish and excellent, but the moment to moment impact of just hitting a button has absolutely no sauce to it and enemies take ages to kill which only makes it worse. Then you get into the stuff exactly like you mentioned, where it's all just tedium. ARR in particular made me bounce off so many times despite the glowing reviews of the game but it just felt like a colossal waste of time. And then you have Shadowbringers being absolutely tremendous and carrying through the combat tedium. The highs are very high, and the lows make my ADHD brain want to loving die
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Sep 13, 2023 00:54
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Truga posted:for me that's worst of both worlds because overworld combat tends to be basic enough for the lowest common denominator to handle it solo I specifically mean vanilla where the combat meant you had to respect mob pathing and couldn't handle multiple foes so you had to pay attention. Later expansions removed all that and made it a joke so yeah it sucks then.
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Sep 13, 2023 01:08
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queeb posted:Every MMO needs to take a lesson from FFXIV about keeping old content relevant. Every day in running old dungeons for the leveling roulette, old raids for Alliance roulette,, stuff like that counter point you have to play the game for 200 hours until you get to the fun part maybe they should ditch it
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Sep 13, 2023 01:50
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CuddleCryptid posted:Honestly I disagree with this, smaller guilds are the best way to find internet friends. The issue with larger guilds is that a guild with 1000 active members or whatever is really no different than trade chat on the server itself, and you could friend random people in PUGs just as much as one of untold numbers you happen to guild with. There's just so much noise. That's why I specifically called out casual. Modern WoW has pretty much all content available as 10-person groups and has flexible raid difficulty so it doesn't matter if you bring a few extra people along or lose a couple for the night. I got sucked into the latest expansion hype cycle for a few months and met some chill people in a small guild to do normal raids with, then ended up playing a bunch of other non-WoW games with that group too like League of Legends and Valheim. Not everything has to be a monster guild clusterfuck. For a lot of casual raiders it's just their third place and you'll be accepted quickly if you hang around and be pro-social.
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Sep 13, 2023 03:21
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There should only be a shared overworld, instancing is the devil. Having access to infinite reruns of dungeons without the possibility of running into a player who isn’t in your friend group is such a deeply unhealthy idea, there’s no brakes there
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Sep 13, 2023 06:39
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Third World Reagan posted:counter point Idk, if it takes you 200 hours to get to the mahjong maybe you need to git gud.
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Sep 13, 2023 07:48
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an iksar marauder posted:There should only be a shared overworld, instancing is the devil. Having access to infinite reruns of dungeons without the possibility of running into a player who isn’t in your friend group is such a deeply unhealthy idea, there’s no brakes there This would shatter the servers into a thousand pieces of molten slag but agreed. Talking to people in the overworld is cool and bringing them in and out of instances is cooler.
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Sep 13, 2023 14:12
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Competing for boss spawns with 5000 other players and 10000 bots 24/7 doesn't seem very fun to me. MMOs are too large in scale and playerbase now.
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Sep 13, 2023 15:01
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gw2 really has the best solution: everyone is on the "same" server as far as pve is concerned, and overworld is just instances that automatically fill/empty as people play. you still see a shitton of people doing stuff, but it's not so much you can't do whatever you came there to do
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Sep 13, 2023 15:26
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Truga posted:gw2 really has the best solution: everyone is on the "same" server as far as pve is concerned, and overworld is just instances that automatically fill/empty as people play. you still see a shitton of people doing stuff, but it's not so much you can't do whatever you came there to do The instance limit feels like it's at the ideal threshold when you're fighting a difficult meta boss like the one in Dragon's End. Huge crowds but even with so many people you can still fail by running the timer out.
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Sep 13, 2023 15:36
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GW2 is cool but for some reason I find the UI overwhelming. I logged in to my account for the first time in ages the other day and while the base ui is pretty simple there's so many menus and submenus and inventory stuff that just trying to put myself back together was a lot.
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Sep 13, 2023 16:04
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Competing for boss spawns with 5000 other players and 10000 bots 24/7 doesn't seem very fun to me. MMOs are too large in scale and playerbase now. You can cap server populations at whatever fits inside your world, or do the invisible instancing thing gw2 did if you have to. But instancing absolutely takes away from the massive aspect of mmos, and infinite access to rerunnable instanced content means self isolation is optimal gameplay for character progression, which is just completely stupid for a social game.
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Sep 13, 2023 16:32
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an iksar marauder posted:You can cap server populations at whatever fits inside your world, or do the invisible instancing thing gw2 did if you have to. But instancing absolutely takes away from the massive aspect of mmos, and infinite access to rerunnable instanced content means self isolation is optimal gameplay for character progression, which is just completely stupid for a social game. Okay but what if you don't want every dungeon or major boss fight to be a riot
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Sep 13, 2023 16:36
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an iksar marauder posted:You can cap server populations at whatever fits inside your world, or do the invisible instancing thing gw2 did if you have to. But instancing absolutely takes away from the massive aspect of mmos, and infinite access to rerunnable instanced content means self isolation is optimal gameplay for character progression, which is just completely stupid for a social game. I don't even necessarily disagree with you but like, WoW and XIV have gigantic social scenes despite relying heavily on instancing. I can go out anywhere on an RP server and see dozens of people hanging out and socializing. I don't really think not having to sit in town spamming for group invites or w/e is that important to the social experience.
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Sep 13, 2023 17:11
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 lol I have played FFXIV many a time and the "giant social scene" is a hell of a stretch unless you count the honestly creepy clubs or super insular groups also the MSQ requirement is just absolutely *insane* at this point Noise Complaint fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 18:15
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No Dignity posted:Okay but what if you don't want every dungeon or major boss fight to be a riot Make enough content and spread it around the world. Make traversal take some time and effort, high-end zones dangerous to get into and hang out in, character builds and player motivations varied enough that too many people don't share the same "optimal thing to do" at the same time.
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Sep 13, 2023 18:31
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Noise Complaint posted:
There should be, like, 3 expansions that tie into each other max, then they "start over" so that people don't need to play like 400 hours of content
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Sep 13, 2023 19:04
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jokes posted:There should be, like, 3 expansions that tie into each other max, then they "start over" so that people don't need to play like 400 hours of content Forcing people to do the base game is *the worst* and the fact that the community endorses it as a rite of passage is incredibly dumb.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:07
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actually, the story owns and it's good that you have to pay to skip
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Sep 13, 2023 19:08
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The base game is the game. If you don't like that you're not gonna like it when you get to max level. People rushing to endgame and hating it the entire time is due to WoW brainworms
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Sep 13, 2023 19:13
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I mean I like ARR but I think it's tone is incredibly incongruent with where the game ended up. The overall world felt a lot darker in tone in the portrayal of the Eorzean nations compared to Garlemald and a lot of sidequests, or even msq stuff like Sastasha is really bleak. I loved that. The Edda quest is probably still the best bit of content in the game. It's just we go from the honestly super interesting stuff in say 2.55 to EW where it's a complete 180 in tone and that's a big part of why I loathe EW's story. It's way too sunshines and rainbows.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:13
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aw frig aw dang it posted:The base game is the game. If you don't like that you're not gonna like it when you get to max level. People rushing to endgame and hating it the entire time is due to WoW brainworms This is because FFXIV is an ok Final Fantasy game but tbh it's not a good MMO. If you have to do hundreds of hours of solo story content to start grouping with players that's a hell of a gatekeep.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:23
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aw frig aw dang it posted:The base game is the game. If you don't like that you're not gonna like it when you get to max level. People rushing to endgame and hating it the entire time is due to WoW brainworms Yeah, but that's a lot of game and they've gotten so much better at everything over the years old content just doesn't hit the same vibe and had explicitly different goals, and the culture it was created in was WAY different. ARR was aping WoW's Cataclysm quest design
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Sep 13, 2023 19:27
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Imo a huge part of the issue with FFXIV is that an MMO is perhaps the worst medium to use to tell a complicated story with a lot of named characters and details. The story itself is aggressively Final Fantasy, which should be expected, but a game that is expected to be played for thousands of hours needs to make sure that plotlines are done in small chunks, not long threads, so that the scale can stay comprehensible for people who aren't mainlining it hard. It doesn't help that the vast majority of your time following those threads is just running back and forth all over the drat map, including going back to the Waking Sands 500 times on foot because I guess it's more atmospheric not to have a teleport crystal there. E. It's also so drat long. I got about halfway through ARR before giving up and buying a skip to get into Heavensward, but I went to the "watch old cutscenes" book to catch up on the scenes I missed doing so. Even just standing at the book and doing cutscene after cutscene, with no fights or travel in between, it took two hours to get through all of them. CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 19:28
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The actual scripting and quest design of ARR is absolutely dire, even post-update. Like the story might be okay zoomed out but the minute-to-minute questing of 'go to south shroud to see a man about a dog, go to north shroud to get the dog's collar, go to north thanalan(???) to speak to the dog's original owner and get the little bell that used to be on the collar don't worry guys I swear this is getting to you fighting garuda soon' is absolutely diabolical. When I was guiding a friend through ARR a couple of years ago I just had to keep reassuring him the scenario stops being such disconnected nonsense once you hit Heavensward because he was ready to tap out half way through
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Sep 13, 2023 19:28
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Yeah, I think having the story be clearly marked "do you want some story? come on inside!" opt-in is probably better of a game design for story-based MMOs, since people clearly focus WAY more on optimization and grinding and poo poo. Just have the story inform the vibe, not be a huge gate to access the content and play with your friends. That being said, Final Fantasy 14 is a Final Fantasy first, second, and third and the MMO bit is only at the end of things. It's essentially like playing FF5, but all the dungeons and bosses are multiplayer and it received regular updates.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:31
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I don't think XIV is ever going to be that game tbh. Especially since you can pay money to skip it already.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:32
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The story is decent but 100% of relevant activities to do in the game should not be gated behind it. It’s annoying. It’s fun to actually do dungeons and raids and stuff and when I’m playing video games I don’t always feel like watching TV instead, which is what 90% of the MSQ is. Let me do the story at my own pace and actually enjoy other stuff too.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:33
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Yeah, no XIV is a totally different beast. If you're playing FF14 to do forever hell-grind leaderboard poo poo and optimizations of optimizations you're probably not playing the right game.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:33
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CuddleCryptid posted:Imo a huge part of the issue with FFXIV is that an MMO is perhaps the worst medium to use to tell a complicated story with a lot of named characters and details. This is what turned me off of the game hard - I'm not playing an MMO for a cutscene-driven plot.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:54
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MMO's shouldn't have a super involved story, just make a sandbox with an engaging and decently thought out setting. If I want to enjoy a good video game story I'll play a single player game (or multiplayer like BG3). I will never play an MMO because of the quality of its main quest, because they all are uninteresting and poorly executed. Plus, I don't play "massively multiplayer" games for single player type poo poo. I've come to terms to the fact that the kind of MMO's that I enjoy playing simply don't exist anymore. Private survival game servers with PvE rules are the closest that scratches that kind of itch for me.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:56
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people talk about FFXIV's story as if FFXI's wasn't pretty extensive too
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Sep 13, 2023 22:14
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FF14 has it because it’s a final fantasy, and wants the audience of final fantasy enjoyers to play the mmo as much as it wants mmo enjoyers to play its wordy rpg. Because this has been square’s consistent position it’s basically never going to unfocus the story. That said a part of me is genuinely surprised they’re not using Dawntrail as a “start the new story here” jumping off point, given how aggressive they’ve been about clearing all the dangling plot threads off the table before. Feel like it’s a p big missed opportunity
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Sep 13, 2023 22:16
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I really do think they are planning on that eventually and just haven't announced it yet.
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Sep 13, 2023 22:41
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Can you pay for FFXIV and then pay to skip FFXIV story
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Sep 13, 2023 23:00
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Third World Reagan posted:Can you pay for FFXIV and then pay to skip FFXIV story yeah lol
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Sep 13, 2023 23:03
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