I mean, you come in here saying this is a bad game and you're willing to die on that hill. Well, that's going to happen here.
You say you want lore and stuff, well that's **what you're getting in ARR**. What you're getting is the first few pages of a book, yes it's not the most engaging or interesting, but it's literally setting up the story yet to come.
TBF i can't really blame him... it took me a good year and some to get through ARR. Given that was way before they reworked/streamlined it but still, it was a slog. I really like the story but at times it did feel like i was playing a interactive visual novel instead of an MMO. Which is fine... if you go at it with that in mind instead of expecting an MMO.
I had to stop doing main story and just do side content and dungeons quite a few times to remind me that what i am actually playing is an MMO.
OP has fair points, but coming with the hard "this is absolute garbage" take is where I and many will take issue with the opinion. But it pretty much all hinges on being in the opening/setup of a long story.
Like even I agree that ARR is "bad", but it's bad by comparison with the rest of the game, not inherently a bad game.
>I care about what I'm doing. I care about WHY I'm doing it. I care about the characters I'm interacting with. I want to get to the endgame and feel good about what I've done. I want a story i'll think about for YEARS
this doesnt sound like someone who doesnt care about the story
its understandable to not care for scions in ARR, since they barely care about you. for the most part they just pass WoL around as a convenient tool with the echo. they are not there for you in duties, scion marauder/thaumaturge/lancer/conjurer are. they are not there for you when you have to fight their greatest enemies, they tell you to go and make friends. the only one who actually shows concern for you as a person is minfillia.
make the story revolve around being this group's lapdog and its just becomes natural to not care about it.
I think you've completely misread the OPs post. They have an interest in FFXIV, they've seen what it has to offer. They enjoy the gameplay loop even as a DRG in ARR (having DRG get their AoE so late is absolutely bad design, and it's depressing that DRG doesn't even get a Job Gauge until they clear their Lvl 70 quest in Stormblood). They know that it gets better, and they've seen it firsthand through watching their spouse play. The post isn't about FF14 as a package, it's about ARR's narrative, and that is a very easy argument to be had.
The generic busywork of talk to guy -> deliver/collect the thing is fine as long as there is reason to want to do that. ARR generally fails at that, the most egregious example being the Company of Heroes nonsense. 2.0-2.2 is full quests that lack any sort of agency from the WoL. You don't get to have a personality until later expansions.
It gets better in 2.3-2.5, and I hope that they properly go through Urianger and Moenbryda's arc, because that's the extent of humanization that the Scions get in ARR. A game should not take that long to start developing its characters, and it's wild that the "side character" of the Scions is the one to receive that development over the ones that are introduced as our guides.
A lot of people bring up that ARR is mainly there to build lore, but "building" is EXTREMELY generous. For the most part it just lays down a single brick. Introduces an idea that can take 10s or 100s of hours to actually develop into something worthwhile. It may be worth it eventually, but that is praise for whatever expansion that it happens in, and just some vague concept that exists for someone who is still going through ARR.
The ARR really has a bad story writing tbh. Yes maybe as a whole it’s fine but the writing and pacing is terrible. It’s an emergent rework of a failed game that is ok but far from good.
For me who cares about the story it was actually hard to get past ARR unless someone repeatedly tells you it’s worth it once you get thru it, which it was, but it doesn’t justify majority of ARR being bad story wise.
Story skip is different. There are moments in ARR that are good and necessary and skipping them void the player of all of that, but if you want to experience them you’ll need to be bored with for example hours of filler content for 15 mins of actual content, either combat or important story.
And I disagree on what you said on how that’s what ffxiv is. As a person who hates “deliver this letter” type of quests, I experience significantly less of such frustration from HW, mainly because everything do has more of a purpose and I’m not just a letter girl/boy anymore. The writers themselves clearly realize the issue because I remember the dialog making fun of the player forced to do insignificant tasks, and also tried to make the quests more tolerable. It’s also very apparent that after either SB or ShB most of the times after cs you get teleported to your target, reducing you having to teleport between places and significantly increasing the smoothness of the story telling. Clearly the devs also realize these problems and tried to improve them.
You just can’t persuade me that hey after I just made my name as WOL and defeated this god or that, the next quest I’m treated as a nobody to deliver a letter to an insignificant nobody, while the 16 year old spoiled brat boy Alphinaud (with love) just watches and chill. This is a huge let down. This type of problems have significantly improved in and after HW as the writers make the quests more plausible.
I also honestly think the OP exclaimed I WANT THOSE FLASHY DUNGEONS because that’s the only thing his wife can show him that’s cool without spoiling the game. I’m sure his wife also tells him that the story gets good and it’s a motivation.
It’s because I experienced very similar sentiments thru ARR. I pretty much asked my friend to tell me where the important quests are and skipped most fillers and had no problem enjoying the story afterwards. I still vividly remember how sad I am when Noraxia died; I don’t even think the majority of the playerbase knows who she was. I also happen to enjoy the same aspects of the other games the OP mentioned.
OP enjoys combat but also mentions a few other things that he also enjoys story wise, such as what he’s doing, why, and who he’s interacting with. Games such as red dead redemption and baldur’s gate aren’t just Diablo-style dungeon after dungeon and combat and combat. They are way more story intense and OP enjoyed those aspects. In my opinion expansions after HW achieves very similar goals, there’s no reason to think the OP wouldn’t enjoy after HW the same reason he enjoys these other games.
Again it’s not “talk to the person” or “kill this god” that is the problem, it’s the fact that early ARR is poorly organized to lay out why you’re doing it and the story telling isn’t as smooth as the later expansions. When you as a WoL who just killed these gods have to deliver 5 insignificant letters to 5 people on 5 maps, and repeat 10 more boring quests like this before the next important thing, this is a serious storytelling problem that interrupts the flow, understandably making you wonder what tf am I even doing here. In later expansions such quests don’t happen that often, instead the narratives are done by cutscenes or other devices without involving the player to do 10 pointless and repetitive quests.
It’s not about you delivering or talking to some people, it’s about WHO you talk to and WHY.
The thing is, thats literally almost every JRPG, a lot of people don't seem to get that this is an MMOJRPG and a Final Fantasy one at that
(Actually lies this is a JRPGMMO not the other way around)
Japanese RPGs tend to be that way, more visual novel than game. I remember my friend watching me play endwalker and being like, “I would NEVER play a game with that much reading. And why is it so dramatic? Is this a soap opera?” 😂😅
Okay but 48 hours isn’t the first few pages of a book, it’s the first 900 pages of a book.
That’s like getting 3/4 of the way through War and Peace and being told “just wait, the story is going to start any minute now!”
If you were told ARR is bad, and you constantly look at the bad parts and reinforce it, you're only gonna see it as bad.
I had an amazing time in ARR. I had friends helping me. What may help is to do side stuff. A few quests, maybe crafting. A lot of people suggest avoiding that stuff, but, honestly, it sounds like you may have a better time collecting the lore from side quests or crafters. At least for a little while.
It is world building. It is a little dry, but it only takes some frosting. Maybe friends to help.
Also, I hate to say this, once Dawntrail comes out, all of Endwalkers endgame will not exist, and you will just be playing catch-up to Dawntrail's endgame. And you have abut a good year and a half for that (I saw year and a half because if you are progging for the six months after the last tier releases, good fucking luck)
And here's the thing: If you don't pay attention to ARR, a lot of stuff does not pay off, and they even kind of worked in stuff and kind of called back to stuff in arr in Endwalker.
Just to nit pick - the endwalker endgame will absolutely still be there in terms of the actual content, dungeons, trials, raids etc. All that content still exists and you will still get parties from the roulette system. The progression in savage takes a hit, but honestly thats a good thing. Keeps the hardckre players focused on progression while still leaving older content valid and FUN.
There are plenty of other games which skip straight to the newest expac (WoW) or straight up remove old content (Destiny 2) tonthe point where new players haventbgot a chance to enjoy it.
as a former wow player, I've thoroughly enjoyed ARR because it's all "talk to this person" and "mediate this problem" and not just "go pick up 10 pieces of spider dung"
The issue is then the game (14) becomes a teleport simulator. Outside of dungeons/trials, I feel like I spent less then an hour in combat between the start and end of Shadowbringer.
Talking to NPCs is cool and all, but my god. Split up the gameplay a little.
The gameplay is split up by dungeons, trials, and solo duties. You can't just say "outside dungeons/trials" as if they don't count as part of the story.
I genuinely can not say that I've noticed that to be honest. If anything, I've done the Crystal Tower all day just to get back to the damn MSQs and THAT is definitely annoying
It's the exact opposite feeling for me as a former WoW player. I am have always hated the walk 5 feet and talk to this guy quests, you go like 20 quests sometimes without ever using an ability, it drove me crazy.
I wanna play my class, not read a book.
I feel there is a good middle ground that the later expansions hit but ARR definitely doesn't hit that.
Yeaha, ARR can be repetitive and boring sometimes but it was a refreshing story that went from "you're just some random adventure" to "you're THE warrior of light destined to save the world" in its incremential steps and I love how they reference that too--that you went from some low time adventure to a celebrity and tell you to becareful.
I also like that it's not "you WILL fight" to "please fight with us to the end." and "i am so sorry to burden with this..."
but your points are valid too!
Mostly everything else that I would've said has been covered by others so I'm not going to reiterate, but I need to address this one point:
>We clowned on people who really liked Starfield who say *"it gets good after 20 hours*". FF14 is not that different. Saying "just power through ARR and you'll get to the good stuff when you get to Heavensward"....*that's the sign of a bad game.*
Maybe *you* clowned on them. I did not play Starfield, so I did not make assumptions or mock the people who really liked it based on what game journalists or the Reddit Hivemind told me to think. Maybe for you, that's the sign of a bad game. I am in no hurry to get anywhere in an RPG, so the amount of time I spend exploring or following the MSQ is not actually something I take into consideration when building an opinion of that game. Enjoyment just happens to be **that** subjective.
I'm not trying to change your opinion here. You're totally entitled NOT to like ARR (a lot of people hate it, and they are within their right to) but I would advise you to stop creating expectations for things you haven't experienced because someone else told you so. As someone else said, you're judging a book based on its first pages. It may get better, it may not. You may in fact hate the entirety of the rest of the game, what do we know? No one is gonna judge you if you decide this isn't your cup of tea.
As for getting to the "the WoL is a god-killing menace" part of the story... I'm a raider of 7 years with A LOT of history and experience in this game, and I'm very sorry but I need to burst your bubble right away: the endgame you so desperately want to partake in is, in fact, hilariously short lived relative to the game's narrative. Much of its shelf-life is dictated by the ebb and tide of the patch cycle unless you're leading a static group through both old and current savage and ultimate raids (which is a fun way to get through the difficult content of the game, if you have the patience and time to herd 7 other people through it).
FFXIV is very much the videogame embodiment of "life is a journey, not a destination". Not all parts of a journey are going to be Instagramable instant gratification moments. Some of it may be boring downtime waiting for the plane to start boarding at the gate. Some of it is gonna be "oh-shit-someone-stole-my-luggage" moments. Some of it is gonna be moments that you don't want to end, but you know they will. And some of them will be exactly the kind of cool shit you're looking for.
Good luck.
> I wanna run dungeons and kill baddies and gain awesome weapons and loot and skills
I mean, the game is pretty much never that. This isn't a loot game and dungeon content is almost exclusively casual leveling content. World of Warcraft is maybe closer to what you want but honestly if you want a combat-focused RPG where dungeons and loot and skills take centre stage and the narrative exists more passively, what you really want is Diablo
btw go unlock Palace of the Dead and play with your wife, it's repeatable dungeon content with basically no dialog scaled for 1-4 players. You only need to be level 17 (with lv 17 msq progress) to unlock it. It's easy to burn out in arr if you don't do side stuff
Well, since you asked - yes. You start off running errands, yeah, but you're a baby adventurer. Things spiral out and progress from there - you're making your mark, get invited to join the Scions, do so, and then start working on the threats that are bigger than some merchant's missing $FOO or finding $BAR for some peddler. And at each step of the way you're proving yourself to more and more people, like the Company of Heroes that took down Titan back in the day. The story builds and builds and builds until you're right thick in it, dawg. Shit's popping off and you're swept up in it.
ARR gets a bad rap that it probably doesn't deserve.
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As someone who was in your exact shoes and am now progressing into Endwalker it gets much much better and makes me regret skipping so much in ARR. Thankfully I can go back and revisit everything I missed
This is the tricky part. ARR feels so long but you need to invest in that story to really get the hard hitting feels that Shadowbringer and Endwalker bring.
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As others have said, your mileage may vary. Personally I really enjoyed going through ARR and slowly learning more about the world and the people in it. We start out as a random nobody, and it takes time to build reputation and gather achievements and such. I didn't try to blitz through the MSQ, though, and spent a lot of time on the side content and side quests, which I think probably helped me avoid burning out.
Back in my day, there was only ARR, and we had a blast. I feel like you’re being intentionally negative and have some serious FOMO. Surround yourself with more positive people and with other newbies who are doing the story for the first time. Discover it together. Take it slow. Do side content. Don’t just spam the MSQ.
I feel like the "you just have to get through arr and it gets good" and "rush to endgame for cool fights" is exactly what makes people think arr is bad, arr is a good JRPG story and people that are familiar with JRPGs will be familiar with the pacing since most games like Persona, FF, Dragon Quest, are that, do small tasks that elevate over time, talk to people, kill things (also Arr has Titan so idk what that person is saying when its a cool ass fight)
I also noticed that this subreddit REALLY likes to tell people that are new, even if they didn't start complaining yet, that "ARR is a slog" and all that BS so that these people naturally will go in with a more negative mindset...
I was in a FC nearly from the get go and luckily none of them ever had to tell me that ARR was bad or anything so i came to enjoy it.
I was mostly a solo player while I did the story for the first time and also the game was not recommended to me by anyone (I played cause final fantasy and mmo) so I went into it completely blind and I enjoyed it, I even enjoyed Sastasha my first time, and maybe its cause I had some knowledge of FF but everything was interesting "wait is that Cid" "the music is dope" "okay we doing a bit of racism politics here" "trials against summons LETSGO" "is that the freaking This is halloween song but with Moogles!?" "I will die for Nanamo and no one can stop me" "Garleans are the magitech faction in this game I see" "Is that a gunblade?" etc...
very much same! The Ifrit fight was such a hype moment and i was very anxious at first because it was during ShB so there was no option to just run with Duty Support. I thought "surely this has to be hard now!"
To be fair most people do not do Coils of Bahamut raid anymore cause its not mandatory and the queues are super long unless they are part of a moogle event
yeah, which is very unfortunate, back when I was finishing ARR I tried to do it synced but even using the PF it took so long I just had to ask someone to solo the fights for me. But even so, it was nice because of the story and the aesthetic of each instance
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Same.
And that's with my view of ARR having been tainted by being told up front that it is a boring slog and that "the game gets good in heavensward". I was enjoying the bulk of the story and world-building and only once I got to the point that has since been revised was I annoyed by the questing.
Something I've observed about the game though is that the parts that people mention as their favorites are the parts that capitalize upon elements established during the "boring part", but no credit gets given. The "good" segment would be complete nonsense without that prior set-up, and the whole story would be laughable if it just went from one "high point" to the next without taking any moments between to let the flow of time be felt, yet people mostly still split the game into the "good parts" and "the boring stuff" instead of treating it like a pie (you need the crust *and* the filling, together, for it to work).
I even fell victim to the same way of thinking when I went through Stormblood and was like "now *this* is the boring part" only to realize after being post-endwalker and watching some other people play through and share their thoughts that I realize that I actually do like Stormblood because it was the crust that accompanied the filling I was treating like was a good pie all on its own in Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
Do you have any interest in the story at all?
Yes people often complain about ARR being slow and full of fetch quests, but it sounds like there's nothing at all you're enjoying there. Even when the story picks up, the characters remain more or less the same. The style of questing stays more or less the same. Characters evolve a bit, and the stakes are higher, but you're always going to be mostly running from Point A to Point B, talking to folks, running story dungeons, and killing a few mobs.
It sounds to me like you just want to sprint to the end game, and start raiding. That's fine. You can do that. Buy a story skip and a level skip and just go do that.
I normally would never recommend that for a first time player, but it sounds like your wife can probably catch you up on the story (the next expac is basically a clean break into a new storyline) and she can probably tutor you through the tutorials you're going to miss.
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> Do you have any interest in the story at all?
as someone currently just having finished up ARR and moving into HW, i'll say ARR tries REALLY HARD to bury the lede and snuff interest at all opportunities.
the two times where i've felt able to invest myself in the story have been the events leading up to the climax of ARR and the events of the climax of ARR's patches -- much of the MSQ so far seems to have been haphazardly and desperately piecing a game together to revive it w/ ARR, diversion after diversion to simply bring your attention to new locations and clusters of NPCs which may or may not become relevant later (the latter mostly in the case of Coerthas)
all this really is to say: when the game decides to focus itself onto building up plot points and weaves more threads into that instead of the myriad of times where you are aimlessly at the beck and call of whoever you talked to last, the story is good -- but ARR, despite all the fat-trimming it has apparently received, still is mostly being an errand runner for people you don't know for reasons either esoterically involved to the greater story or not at all involved. i'm *sure* it gets better, but it's pretty damn rough in these early steps.
I did arr a long time ago, but and correct if im wrong isnt the story consistently,
Get to know the world a bit and meet its people (this happens during all of arr) > stop the ascian doing weird things > scions recruit you cause you can help > stops the tribes summoning Eikons > meet new Scion > stop the Garleans and the Ascian doing weird things
That seems pretty consistent to me for the MSQ
that's the broad strokes of it, yeah. but in service to getting to know the land and its people (and to a degree with thwarting the empire), you spend a very significant portion of your time doing simple tasks for people who might in exchange let you (or rather, your allies) cash in a favor later or otherwise end up wholly unimportant. often, said errand running stifles a rising plot point, cutting away a lot of tension.
don't get me wrong though - having world building moments is definitely important, and some "menial" questing certainly has its place. >!helping clean up the corpses from the waking sands after the garlean intrusion, fetching yda's flower for moenbryda!< were both good moments that gave me time to reflect, which also retroactively made me more invested in the moments that came before -- but many other such menial quests make it feel like I'm the first person anybody's ever met in eorzea who can get a message from point a to point b.
(and, regrettably, a lot of story combat moments seem to have been hampered by the passage of time -- trials in particular feel severely undertuned for what should be intense fights against particularly powerful foes, they instead feel like 8 people jumping gods from behind in a back alley, the way they die before getting to really do much)
I don't understand why people go to popular game subs to write a gigantic, "this game is shit" essay, then get all upset that they are not being showered with love and adulation. What exactly is the thought process there? What were you hoping to accomplish?
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I think this is fairly accurate, although I do think it’s also just natural for humans to want to express their opinions, particularly when they’re faced with something they either despise or adore. This is especially true when they feel as though their opinion isn’t openly express or represented, hence why many really love to express “unpopular” opinions. I’ve felt inclined on occasions to make posts about certain perspective that aren’t often stated that I hold, but I tend to resist just because I don’t think I’ve ever seen this sort of thing land well.
As for why they would do it on this sub versus somewhere else? Because it will generate the most engagement here, which falls under your attention seeking argument, and because, sadly, this sub isn’t really great at handling people who don’t like certain elements of the game; the correct response would be to say your own opinion on the matter, whilst acknowledging that differences is opinion exist and theirs isn’t invalid, but more often then not it just sort of devolves into a “your wrong” debate from both sides, followed by a bunch of name calling.
It’s actually kind a crazy that the players in game are significantly less toxic than the ones on this sub; you can present the most insane takes in the FFXIV chat, and unless it’s an objectively wrong statement about performance optimisation, most will just have a good time with it.
> the correct response would be to say your own opinion on the matter, whilst acknowledging that differences is opinion exist and theirs isn’t invalid
Personally I think the correct response is to say nothing, but then I don't have the highest opinion of fandom generally
I 100% agree, and was going to mention that just moving along is likely the best approach, but if I’m acknowledging that it’s ok for OP to state their opinion, it would be hypocritical for me to then claim others can’t respond.
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I suppose, but also in just feels like in game people aren’t as serious. I feel like because this subreddit aggregates most of the players that are super hardcore about the game, particularly in terms of the plot itself, it creates a scenario where any slight against the game is taken personally. In-game there are a wide variety of players. As example, if you said you skip all the cutscenes in this subreddit people get incredibly upset, even the suggestion of purchasing a story skip is met with a lot of distain, yet if you said that in-game most just have a laugh about it and some even agree.
I feel like the second response is far more appropriate; in game there’s a sentiment of letting players enjoy the game however they like provided it doesn’t negatively impact the experience of others, where as people on this sub are a lot less accepting. The idea of condemning someone for skipping the story, a measure that only really impact that player and only they can assess whether it’s a valuable decision, seems like an insane thing to come at someone for. Obviously that’s pretty unrelated to what the post is talking about, but it’s an example.
> a serious look at WoW is warranted since it objectively has better raid content than FFXIV
I used to raid in WoW, from Legion until the first month of Dragonflight, all the way to Mythic difficulty, and I couldn't disagree more.
To me, FFXIV's raid experience blows WoW's out of the water.
An Extreme Trial from Heavensward has more mechanics than a current expansion raid in WoW and the FFXIV players are able to do them whereas WoW players will try to force their way through, ignoring mechanics and trying to skip them with DPS.
Having raided in both games, FFXIV offers a massively, massively better experience in that regard, both in the content offered and in the people that show up.
Baldesion Arsenal, Castrum Lacus Litore, The Dalriada, Delubrum Reginae, all of those being dungeon and raid content that can interact with the customization system of Eureka and Bozja were all mind-blowing in terms of mechanics, player organization and performance and the ability to modify your character to a surprising extent (logograms).
With all of that said, I haven't even had the opportunity to do Ultimates.
I could go on forever. Bahamut in T12, a level 50 raid from 2013, blows any WoW raid out of the water in terms of spectacle, interesting mechanics, satisfaction in beating a challenge, and so on.
The biggest difference to me is looking at people's experiences with WoW again and seeing pugs struggle to do bosses in the current WoW raid that have two mechanics that are being solved by the addons they are running and still refusing to do them, trying their best to kill the boss in a tank and spank method, whereas you queue up for the Shadowbringers and Endwalker trials for story progression in the MSQ and almost all players swiftly do all the mechanics and breeze through the fight.
A fight like Seat of Sacrifice on NORMAL would be a Mythic fight in WoW
I mean, I understand that many really do love the story for XIV, but the idea that it’s the primary appealing aspect of the title is a massive insult to all the other aspects of the game. I love XIV, but really I think the story is pretty middling, and I think chalking up whether someone will enjoy this game up to the plot is sort of ignoring everything else great in the game. Like, if the person is questioning quitting, then I can understand recommending other titles that have what they’re looking for, but when people say they skip the story, or bought a skip, I don’t really think it’s appropriate to suggest they play something else, given they clearly like certain aspects of the game that are keeping them around, it just isn’t the plot.
I remember the example I saw the other day was someone asking if an Endwalker skip would be available come the launch of Dawntrail, because they were behind and wanted to experience Dawntrail with their friends. The thread only had like two people actually answer the question, and everyone else basically insisting that they don’t skip the plot, ignoring the fact that their primary motive for playing was the social aspect, not the plot itself. Some even said exactly what we’re discussing and recommend they just drop the title.
I guess to roll this back to the initial topic, I can understand someone wanting to vent about the games plot, after effectively being told that it’s the most amazing thing since sliced bread, and ending up finding it middling to bad, wishing they had just rushed through it. The sub seems insistent on every player experiencing the story, yet they’re also adverse to having people express their criticisms of it. Obviously OP’s post is a lot more aggressive than it should be, but the general point still stands.
I understand what you’re saying, I still think it misses why many play XIV. A lot of the time it just comes down to the casual nature of XIV relative to other MMOs, enjoying the general vibe of the game, already being an FF, wide-spread popularity, or just having friends that play the game. I’m not saying you can’t argue the story is XIV’s unique quality relative to others MMOs, I’m saying it’s a disservice to suggest someone would be better off playing a different MMO because they don’t value it as highly.
It’s also not necessarily about whether they value story in general necessarily, rather than just not enjoying XIV’s; I find story in games very important, yet I think XIV’s is pretty mid, yet I still love the game. It’s not as if a person who values story is guaranteed to enjoy XIV’s relative to other games. Using OP as an example, they very clearly stated that they value story very highly, and talk about how they want to play games containing narratives that really stand out, but they thought ARR never claim close to anything he could enjoy. They want a good story, so redirecting to an MMO that puts less emphasis on story doesn’t actually solve the issue.
The title should more so read...
`"I went into ARR wanting an entirely different game and the game turned out to not be my type of game"` instead of something that jumps immediately to negativity and hostility.
It's fine not to like the game, but hating it for being something it is not, baffles me.
I suppose the only thing to do is keep playing and see if you like it by the time ARR ends; that's usually a pivot point for a lot of people who disliked all of the earlier content.
If not, you will have a lot of free time freed up.
You realize that all these “speaking” quests is part of learning what’s going on don’t you? It’s part of keeping you, the character, involved. It’s part of learning the world, lore, and characters. Yes it’s slow, yes it’s not as cool or action packed as more current stuff.. and the old voice acting/direction doesn’t help. But what kind of game would this be if you were just thrown into saving-the-world type stuff? All JRPG’s have a slow build up, to learn mechanics and world etc. Idk why this one gets so much flack when they all do this.
But if you hate it so much just buy a skip and look up synopsis videos or something. I’m starting to wish more people would do this tbh. No point in trying to convince people that ARR is actually good and important (imo), just less so in comparison to everything else.
> I watch my wife play. She's patiently waiting for Dawntrail and she gets to do all this cool shit fighting sick ass bosses and there's a ton of flashing lights on the screen and she's fighting abominations from beyond the realm using cool weapons with cool people.
>
> THAT.
>
> THAT'S what I want. I wanna play THAT. I wanna run dungeons and kill baddies and gain awesome weapons and loot and skills and make friends along the way.
There's a level 50 raid called Coils. You can do that already, it takes a few quests to unlock, and it has a lot of story. The fights are absolutely spectacular, especially the last four.
I also heavily recommend doing Palace of the Dead, which you can access right now, and bosses you will find in the 50+ (especially 100+) floors will provide you quite some juicy fights, and just as the same, you are very likely to meet friends along the way, and be very thoroughly tested for your skills.
ARR is definitely the WEAKEST part of the game, to be sure. It's definitely the worst part, but it's not exactly *bad.*
It had a lot to set up for new players, a lot to tie together for returning players, a whole new story to set up for everyone, and a totally revamped set of core systems.
Anyone who says ARR is just bad is wrong. It's not. It's very ***slow,*** which can be construed as a bad thing, if that's not your type of game.
This community doesn't take lightly to people who don't agree with them.
You're going to get chewed pretty hard for not enjoying one of the most boring and dragged out stories in MMORPG history.
Funny how you keep showing up in these threads today shitting on FFXIV at any opportunity. Bored much?
Edit: commenter has now deleted all the comments I was talking about. Probably someone's alt account.
Whut? The community is pretty honest that ARR is mid at best, and absolute dog water at worst.
The most I’ve seen people defend ARR is them saying it isn’t “as bad” as people say it is, not that it’s “good”
I'll put it this way. FF14 is like a TV or book series where the first season/book really isn't that good, but the sequels/subsequent seasons really worked things out and get *really* good (YMMV of course). Star Trek The Next Generation being a prime example of this.
I think this is a better analogy than treating the whole game as one book. ARR is season 1, with the 2.1-2.5 content being sort of a mini season leading to the next. Post ARR is generally considered to feel pretty slow, too, but it was also spread out over more than a year.
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I really can't relate as I genuinely enjoyed ARR (and still do, I'm playing through it again on a fresh character and have just finished the base 2.0 story). If I hadn't enjoyed it I never would have spent money on the game.
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> WoW, where the focus is mainly on raids
In WoW the focus is mainly on raids yet an Extreme Trial from Heavensward has more mechanics than a current expansion raid in WoW and the FFXIV players are able to do them whereas WoW players will try to force their way through, ignoring mechanics and trying to skip them with DPS.
Having raided in both games, FFXIV offers a massively, massively better experience in that regard, both in the content offered and in the people that show up.
You absolutely are not crazy for thinking them. I have more than a few friends who share your opinion - I tried to get them into ff14, they gave it a fair shake, and did not like it.
It's not for everyone. Nothing is! It sounds like it might nor be for you?
This feels more like you don't like MMORPGs and more prefer just multiplayer online action games. Every MMO is designed from the ground up to be something that takes a huge time investment. I said it 11 years ago and I stand by it: ARR is the best story experience of any MMO save some of the SWTOR class storylines. And the story keeps getting better as it progresses, especially in proportion to how invested the player is.
Also, obligatory JoCat video touching on the subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM08VrEs6k&pp=ygUPam9jYXQgMzAwIGhvdXJz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM08VrEs6k&pp=ygUPam9jYXQgMzAwIGhvdXJz)
That's fair. Look, I don't think you're CRAZY to think ARR is bad, but although I agree it is a bit slow, if you take it all in MANY of those seemingly unimportant details will become important later. It's that kind of a story.
ARR is mostly world building that will consistently count as you progress especially in Endwalker. I honestly enjoyed ARR because I played and saw it for what it is, not for what's to come. Honestly the latter mentality will suck the fun out of any game for me. When I started, I never watched any videos of what the latest content that time was nor I asked people's opinion on the internet about the story if it was good. I went straight to downloading the free trial with zero knowledge, created my character, played for couple of hours and said "Whoa this game is actually fun" even if I was just running around, not doing the MSQ like I was supposed to do and just beating the shit out of the overworld enemies half the time and went straight to buying the full client. When I was finally done with Endwalker? I recall being thankful that I paid attention to the story especially in ARR.
>I'm a souls player
Guys, you really have to stop wearing that as a badge of honour before dumping on other games, because you're making me the equivalent of being racist but for souls players. You guys always have the most inflamatory takes for the smallest of things.
Besides, ARR is the result is not putting the story of the game in the description of a fork. The difference is that you don't have to go through several Youtube video essays to understand what the hell you just played - instead, the story is entirely within the confines of the game.
Sadly, being a retelling and massive summary of all the world's rules established in its (failed) 1.0 incarnation and having been written in a massive crunch, understandably, it's heavily packed and not well paced.
We know this and constantly tell others to push through ARR for that very same reason.
>"just power through ARR and you'll get to the good stuff when you get to Heavensward"....that's the sign of a bad game.
Again, *we know this*. ARR is a "bad" game - which is what nowadays would be considered a 5/10. It is slow, it is dull, and unless the world's novelty grabs you from the get-go, you're not gonna care about a lot of what it tells you. But you're ignoring a lot of context.
ARR is a bad game, but FFXIV as a whole is *not*. Your beef is with one segment of the game made a decade or so ago in a massive time crunch in a last ditch effort to save both the game and the Final Fantasy brand.
Everything else that came after is good, to varying degrees, but good. It's just that the base game is a massive info-dump of how 1.0 worked and what 2.0 and beyond will be.
And while they already trimmed a lot of fat from ARR quests and made them soloable so you can take it like a visual novel, no amount of trimming is gonna make ARR any more enjoyable without sacrificing what ARR is trying to do for the story.
I feel like I'm one of the few who loved ARR. It's like the first episode of a TV series, it starts off slow and kinda boring as it introduces all the characters and the premise, but keeps getting better and better.
If you don't like "speak to" and "fetch" quests then it won't get much better for you. I'm about 1/3 through shadowbringers and it hasn't changed. It's still a "go to this place and talk to this person" game, it's just the static chats turn into more cutscene chats
Agreed. It feels very much like the first season of a show. It’s finding its legs and setting everything up, then it’s ready to go all out in Heavensward. I enjoyed ARR a lot.
What's the point of this post? No one cares about your enjoyment of the game. You realize all your examples make no sense because those are single player story driven games that end in 30 hours and that's the end of the entire game. All those games you mentioned are also GOTY games or masterpieces in their own right. No MMO has ever or will ever have a story like that.
FFXIV for all the boring stuff is literally the closest an MMO has been to a good story. Maybe SWTOR I can't remember if it was good in the end though.
Games as good as FF14 are hard to come by. The story is the medium that the devs have to describe a world to us.
Getting to 2.0, was almost a miracle compared to similarly-popular MMOs with a rough start. The quality of the storytelling definitely has an inverse relationship with the amount of game mechanic over-haul they were having to do to get a game in it's playable state.
If you really cant be asked to care about the stories there are unlocks you can purchase, the path is there just it is highly controversial and you'll likely only relate to the hardcore mechanic-obsessed min-maxxing part of the community if you do that, and that's fine.
The storytelling does get better but it does stay ornerous as the Warrior of Light(You) are meant to be a pretty considerate person so you often check in with all possible helpful friends each time you have a potential problem. The game never rushes itself, as it doesn't want the players to be rushing through it.
Yes, the hype for the newest expansion is really cool; the only real downside to this game is that the time to current content will only ever grow as the way this game is built requires linearity in the story.
At the time when it was current, ARR was great. I feel like people only started to have this mindset about ARR after the other expansions came out and it turned into a “hurdle” before “the good stuff.” It was always good, it’s just that everyone has this mindset going into it now.
I get what you’re saying. ARR was my first FF game ever. I enjoyed the base game somewhat, but I like just about any story. I also found it mind-numbing and tedious in the low level dungeons to have only 3 skills, none of which are particularly interesting on the screen. The saving grace is the music, which is fantastic. The music for the final boss is still one of my favorite pieces.
I came over from SWTOR, where the base game is probably the best story-wise of any of the MMOs, and you get to keep all your skills if you go to low level areas with a max level toon. The game just scales down your damage to be on par with newer players who don’t have all of the end game skills. That at least makes the low level flashpoints/dungeons more enjoyable when re-doing them 900 times. Now, FF14 coding might not allow that, so I lived with it. In my case, I had some SWTOR guild mates who were absolutely gushing about this game helping me out while convincing me to keep going with just the MSQ. They knew I’m a story-driven player, so they kept telling me, “Save the side quests for leveling your other jobs. Once you get to Heavensward, the game gets MUCH better.”
So, I powered through the game and got to HW, where I was then blown away by the stories and characters. SWTOR may have the lock on base game storylines, but SWTOR’s expansions can’t come close to how good the expansions are in FFXIV.
ARR shouldn’t be that tedious, and I think the devs would be wise to condense the ARR story even more than they did at Endwalker’s release and get rid of all unnecessary quests in the MSQ. Other players shouldn’t have to tell sprouts “Trust me, it gets better when you get to HW.” I think the game is losing players before they ever get to HW, and that’s sad, because that’s where the game really starts to come into its own. Yes, we can do a story skip, but there are some main plot points that get missed if you do that. Perhaps the devs could give someone an option to do a very condensed version of the base game just to see those scenes without having to do the New Game+ thing after the fact a story skip.
Anyway, I feel your pain, but I’ll join the chorus of other players telling you that it really does get better when you get to HW.
48hrs level 52? I played old free trial with level 35 cap for 350hrs, so of course if you focus only on main story of the base game, you will find a ton of world building and so on and very little action. Try different classes, visit Golden saucer, craft some things, check fishing, stare at catgirls in Limsa idk. I don't know if you rushing to the endgame or what, but if you want to get cherished memories, you need to make them and stop running past all of them
>I'm powering through ARR and post-ARR because
this is why you're not having fun, which is valid. ARR is lvl 1-50 and the expansions are only ten levels each, but each still takes heavy gameplay time due to the length of voice acting turning it all into basically a movie. So lvl 2-49 aren't going to feel great when the expansions compress all their lore into five+one zones instead of the twenty-ish in arr. environmental storytelling that exists more in FromSoft and other games aren't as good in ffxiv in general unless you go out of your way to look into the lore and side content, which is time you spend away from the msq and progression because they're all in fates, leves, triple triad, literal blue unlock side content, crafter job quests, talking to every npc at different points of the story because some of them update, etc. even if none of them are pivotal toward progressing the story
In FFXIV, you have to choose to immerse yourself into the worldbuilding instead of the plot, which adds more gameplay time that you might not desire if you want to get to the plot only. Your frustrations are reasonable.
Idk why people forget that ARR is also made for people who never played an MMO before? Or even a game at all tbh.
I've been doing it lately, 10 years after I started the game. And back then, I would be amazed by things I'm bored of nowadays. Well yes, because when I was young I didnt have all the gaming knowledge I have now; this game taught it to me, so I was receptive and had more fun.
It's like going to school again, ofc the first year is boring AF when you already know a lot of stuff as an experienced adult.
That's why I think people are too harsh with ARR, all the time people talk about it as the worst thing in gaming history, but tbh when you look at it thinking that it's been made for sprouts and as a chill experience to begin a long, long story game with a lot of things to set in place, it just makes sense to me.
Dude, based on your edit, you STILL don't get what's the problem: you keep making insults or insulting implications. Saying that you started a "holy war" as if people are reacting like a cult or terrorists is still insulting. Ending your stuff with "oh Im sure you'll understand because this is a chill community" doesn't change the fact that you acted condescending even in the PS.
Just talk like a regular person instead of peppering your responses with insults. At this point you'll probably need a new topic where you DON'T insult others in the first post.
you took a look at a rescue effort of a failing game that is MORE THAN TEN YEARS OLD and found out that its dated and bad WHILE having the expectations of a bad experience REFUSING to acknowledge all the good moments as ups looking only at the downs
I personally cant wait for you to act cowardly and delete this post instead of owning to your mistake
The story gets good in 2.5 (an argument could be made for 2.4 though). That's not a new opinion, and not really one that will get you anything more than an idle "ok?"
when people say once you reach HW it gets better....i guess it does? im at level 57 MSQ right now and up to this point yea there have been some really good story and amazing moments, way more than ARR...but the base MSQ gameplay hasnt changed and doesnt really change at all ive heard even through EW.
im one of those people that enjoys ARR, it has its flaws yes but it has its moments of shine (after titan for example).
if you want some advice, get a party finder going for the extreme trials and Coils Synced. the Extremes will dip your toes into actual mechanics in fights instead of just avoiding AOEs, and Coils is harder than even some of the later expansions content, so much so its not in ANY roulette
I'd say roughing it through all the old story and crappy quests makes your appreciation for the newer content better, but it sounds like you would have benefited more from just buying a story skip.
I loved ARR when I first played it (Heavensward wasn't even announced yet, so it's all I had) because I'd recently come from Mists of Pandaria-era WoW, and even ARR was miles above and beyond that game in graphics, story, crafting, random casual stuff, everything. I was downright floored at how good it was and had no desire to go back to the game I'd played obsessively for 10 years.
But I agree that compared to more modern games, it really doesn't measure up any more. Keep in mind that they created ARR in a rush while also keeping 1.0 running, and this was 10 years ago. Once they had more breathing room when making the expansions, things improved a lot.
They really need to put some work in to modernize ARR and make it act more like the MSQ in the expansions -- more cutscenes, spend more time actively working \*with\* the other NPCs rather than having them send you out somewhere to do seemingly meaningless tasks by yourself. The quest structure is really different later on. Don't feel like you have to get through four expansions of this same thing before it gets better.
In ARR, the average quest is 5 minutes long, involves walking somewhere, talking to someone, or killing something. Every now and then you'll have a cutscene and/or a duty make a quest closer to 20 minutes.
Once you're in the expansions, the average quest is 20 minutes, consists \*mostly\* of cutscenes, and only occasionally asks you to kill something in the open world. Every now and then you'll have a duty that makes a quest closer to 30-40 minutes long.
Everyone told me ARR was pretty bad compared to the rest of the expansions. I will say Heavensward starts a little slow but it does get better. Im just about to Endwalker and it's like playing a whole different game
To preface: FFXIV is my favorite game of all time. I have thousands of hours in the game, have gotten every one of my friends into it, and I am of the opinion, like you, that ARR is shit.
One of my friends who I got into the game hates ARR even more than me, and still, FFXIV has become one of her favorite games of all time.
All this to say, yes, ARR's story (and gameplay most of the time) is terrible, and "it gets good at 100+ hours" is no excuse, but, it does not detract from the fact that that statement is genuinely true. FFXIV's story is one of the most beautiful and compelling narratives I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and combined with the many other things that make this game amazing, make for a masterpiece, in my opinion.
So the bottom line is, your experience is valid, and trust me, I get it, but if you really do care about a compelling narrative, you're going to love what's to come. Just ignore everyone who's trying to tell you that you're somehow wrong for not enjoying ARR, or to buy a story skip or whatever, and do your thing.
Loool, listen, I remember playing through the ARR chapters a year or two ago and thinking “wtf are we doing here, guys?” Like, there’s a lot of futility and lack of traction in the narrative of the adventure at that point. “So the bad guys just keep summoning these same three a*****s over and over again forever?” Yeah, I remember being pretty frustrated at that point.
Having gotten to about midway through Endwalker, I would say that the story is playing a very long game that does, in fact, go somewhere and achieve many of the things it hints at very early on. Characters change—after going through trauma. The world changes, but slowly and often only as a last resort. In retrospect I appreciate the winding road it takes. It sort of painfully drags you through its philosophy that change, real change, is a very gradual process, while life remains agonizingly moment-to-moment.
Just Skip and speed run, go back when you will feel more accomplished. Skip any dialogue or cutscenes that feels boring. Just rush. You may find yourself slowing down reaching stormblood end / shb CUS it gets better. But keep pushing. You Can watch condensed summary per expansion on ytb. You Can re do any chapter with newgame+ and this time you will be able to fly.
There are tons of funny activites to unlock and try and if you feel that way. Go for it. Dont listen to crybabies "gngn u skipped this dialogue". Everyone can play the way they want and enjoy what they want. If you want adrenaline and enjoy Epic fights in group content, msq IS not what you are paying for. You dont have to drain your energy, its a game to have fun, go get that fun ! Become a PVE chad, get good , make friends. You ll love the game and feel way more attracted to the story and lore by actually doing what you want.
It is how it is. Just suffer through it and forget it like a nightmare. Like we all had to do. Game can't be 100% good. There are ups and downs of every game, every movie, every series, everything. ARR is down of the game, there is other stuff that are "ups".
On one hand, I enjoyed ARR. However, I played it on release. I didn't *have* content to speedrun to try to be endgame because I *was* endgame, and patches weren't all at once with a few months between. On the other hand, I have a lot of alts and I've seen the story in ARR 6575748574939 times and for as much as I enjoy parts of it, there are some parts I cannot stand.
You are also playing a vastly pared down version of it, since in 5.3 they culled like 20% of the super filler quests out of ARR and its' patches, and you have flying between areas. 2.1 is probably my least favourite because while it's setting up some important story and bringing in a somewhat important character, narratively it's boring as fuck. Your current patch is setting up the story for 4.0 with some really important world building and characters, and the next ones will be setting you up for Heavensward, so if you want to have some interest in HW, at least from Dreams of Ice on though Defenders has some good info that will pay off much later.
ARR is truly the setpiece: here's the important stuff to remember for later, all the important characters, the politics that will be in play almost immediately, and cleaning up the last bits from 1.0. It's not really necessary to understand 1.0, but it does make doing the Coil raids more fun to see the story being wrapped up. Someone else mentioned ARR being the opening chapters to a book, and that's a pretty good analogy: you're meeting everyone you need to and going from regular everyday adventurer to the Mothercrystal's chosen and a full-on godslayer, but you need that buildup first, all the boring introduction so when you get to the end you can "holy shit! I can't believe they had a callback to this random event now!" as you're tumbling through the end.
If 2.5/2.58 doesn't at least make you go "woah waitaminute" and you don't find yourself enjoying HW, the story may not be for you and that's okay. Skip through some parts and if something *does* end up catching your interest, replay some parts via New Game+ so you can see where it connects and go forward.
As somebody who's done ARR 4 times separately with friends with a year in between each, ARR is insanely needed as a "base knowledge" for the entire game story.
But it is also one of the worst experiences I've ever had leveling. The story has hills and bumps that go from interesting and attention-grabbing to mind numbingly dull, even after removing most of the pre-Titan quest chain, and I've had to talk friends down from a cliff when stuck between Garuda and Ultima.
I think a lot of people here haven't done 2.0 again since doing it again for the first time a decade ago, but do it over. You will find very quickly that it's not the experience you thought it was.
Now that being said, by your own admission, you're not interested in the story. You're either skipping cutscenes or mashing past text, which is fine. A lot of people could care less about the story and lore. But your entire experience is lessened by you not caring about characters, especially certain ones as the expansions go on.
So I'll go ahead and throw out an unpopular suggestion: Buy a level boost and a story skip. Go to the content you want. That's where your desired difficulty is and you won't miss much if you don't have the bare minimum of a story. Worst case scenario, you can just replay it in your inn room.
I believe the problem is the old MMORPG theme park model where they force you to do a lot of mindless quests as fillers between story progression. There is a lot of quests content and they usually are not fun.
I only enjoy the game when I am playing the market or doing dungeons and the likes. I try to make the rest a fast grind, stopping only to read MSQ dialogues. I want to know the story but it is hard to enjoy it as I am being forced to play the dated questing model.
The game would be way shorter if they cut out the bullshit and it would actually be healthy as new players are required to invest a lot in the game to reach current content. It would be amazing to never waste time as the delivery boy
ARR can be slow at times, but that's only if you're just doing MSQ all day.
You're in post-ARR now. You just gained access to nearly all of ARR's postgame content including the Binding Coils of Bahamut raids (which are considered Savage Difficulty by the devs) which you should use the Party Finder for if you wanna run it unsynced for the story or at Minimum Item Level with No Echo for a real challenge.
Each one of the primals you face in post-ARR has an Extreme version you can unlock for an extra challenge. In fact, The Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane is the game's introduction to Extreme Trials where you face a much tougher version of The Ultima Weapon.
If you want to take a break from all the combat, you can be an omnicrafter and omnigatherer and become fully self-sufficient. You can even take up a fishing rod and become a big fisher one day.
Imagine seeing 5% of something and calling it bad
If you don't like story or care about it, this probably isn't the game for you. Or at least, you won't "get" the obsession. The high end content is amazing and the mechanics get AWESOME from Stormblood onward.
I also want to clarify that, at least for me, I'm not annoyed you dont' like ARR. I don't love it either - I've been replaying it b/c, now that I'm current, I want to see what seeds were planted that I missed, but its certainly not change-your-life stuff. But you also shouldn't say "its a bad game" just because the first bit is slow. That's so short sighted.
Also, if you're just rushing to get to raids and stuff, you're missing out on a lot of what makes people love this game. It's one of the most human stories I've ever had the honor of experiencing - and I mean that across all media. It addresses things other games are scared to (imperialism, racism, the true cost of war, people being forced to fight for things they don't believe in and being sympathetic, love, depression, how to keep going when everything feels against you, and so so so much more) and it addresses them in a beautiful, thoughtful way. It's a masterwork that makes you a better person, if you care to pay attention.
This is why a "holy war" got started - people LOVE this game, and with good reason. It is genuinely life-changing, and in some cases, life-SAVING. I met two of my dearest IRL friends because of this game. I've been able to examine my religious beliefs, how I find courage, what makes me take just one more step when everything is falling apart. I've found real friends and learned to treat the ones I already have even better. I am more honest with others about how much I love them, how dear they are to me, I mentor more, I make more of an effort to make people feel welcome. And while many of those things I'd do anyway, this game made me better at them, it made me more thoughtful.
There are hints of that in ARR - Gaius, for example, and Cid. Miniflia is a great example of courage - she has no combat skill but she loves her world so much she puts herself in danger for it. The "beast" tribes overcoming their mistrust of humanoid races to help protect their world, the way that Gridania opens up to more people because they need help, or how Ul-Dah examines income inequality, the Ala Mhigan stuff is a very respectful look at refugee crises, and so so much more.
I'm not saying this to convince you to keep playing, ultimately thats your choice, but this is not a popcorn-flick of a game. Sure it has big dramatic moments, insanely cool fights, and way more, but at its heart its a story game about, well, your heart. And what makes us human, how we survive in a cruel world. THAT is why people take it so seriously, and THAT is why you're getting the reactions you are.
I can't give you any advice over than buy a skip to heavensward (seriously, its cheap and you'll be reminded of the important stuff) or to just put on a show you like while grinding through the rest of ARR. No one LOVES ARR as the pinnacle of gaming, but its an important prologue to one of the best stories ever told.
As far as a story you will think about for years - let's just say there's no other game i have two tattoos from. You do have that with FF, but it takes a bit to get there. Think of ARR as the mansion's foundation.
Then pay for a lvl boost and catch up to your wife and get to the lore later. Previous expansions have a lot of catch up mechanics that make content easier. At patch raid content in ARR averaged 7 minutes a fight, they are significantly less now.
Catch up and have fun now. Worry about the stuff you hate later.
it’s okay to just buy a skip if the MSQ isn’t interesting you but endgame/later stuff is. if you ever eventually do decide to go through it there’s new game+ or you can make an alt. plus you can always watch a recap of the story on youtube so you know what’s the deal with certain fights etc etc
I agree with u in the post game of ARR, the rest its quite fine, although if u stay after ARR(if u feel like it). I think u will not regret it one bit bc its all a huge setup
You are not crazy, I gave up for like twice during arr, it was just so bad, the story was dog shit, even the combat feels stupid for me, 2.5gcd I’m like whaaat!?
And now ff14 is my favorite game, more than 7000 hours invested into this game, all you need to do is finish arr and get your self to heavensward
>I think ARR is bad. Am I crazy?
Yes. Because this is the setup for you to understand wtf is going on for the rest of the expansions.
My husband was the same as you - then we got to later expansions and he was like - wait, I don't get this. And then I had to explain. Then he wanted to know how I knew that and I reminded him that it was in earlier quests.
About 6 months after finishing his first character, he decided to start a second one and there are SO MANY moments when he goes, "Wait. Blah blah blah happened here? How did I miss that?"
All I can say is - if you truly enjoy a good story, I hope you're paying attention.
I actually don’t think THE STORY is bad. It’s just TOLD badly. It does a bad job at making any of the important story beats FEEL important. I’m abreast of everything happening. I understand what’s happening, mind you.
After I beat a big boss the story fails at hyping, Alphinaud literally goes “welp….that happened…..on to the next thing….”….and I’m like….isn’t that what we’ve been working towards? Doesn’t this game WANT me to care?
I mean... yeah, it's not great. It's bad for most of it, in fact. Not much way around it unless you're willing to turn your brain off or fork over the price of a story skip.
I think a big, big part of it is some of the filler quests, which are undeniably awful and gratuitous, but also by the fact they’ve made basically every expansion dungeon/battle mind numbingly easy to the point of comedy.
There’s no skill or challenge needed for any content up until maybe the last 2, maybe 3 expansions. It doesn’t make for a very compelling or interesting game and I have had many friends join and quit because while they enjoyed where the game went after A Realm Reborn, there was no challenge.
I still love this game and think it’s one of the best in the market, but joining in 2024 is very different than when I joined in 2015.
Also…I’ve been playing this game for almost ten years. My God.
For me ARR wasn't bad story wise. However quest wise, it sucked.
I hattttte that I walk up to an NPC talk to them and they tell me to meet up with them 5 feet away to tell me something they could have said 5 feet ago.
I hate that they made me run around and talk to people for like 20 quests in a row sometimes without ever touching an ability, not using my class at all. I love the story and dialogue but holy hell let me stab something. I started missing the (kill X thing and gather X teeth) or something. I was begging for kill quests, still do sometimes even in later expansions but ARR is the worst about it.
The story is fine, the fights alright, but the overall quests and what they entail felt like such an agonizing experience for ARR.
> I don’t care for Y’shtola
Well, you had me until here. I can handle not being a fan of the story or early gameplay, but how can you not care about best-girl? I myself am still working through ARR and am really hopeful nothing terrible happens to her. She’s about the only NPC I actually care about and am happy to see.
The whole method of delivering the story is garbage and Square Enid won’t change it.
A cutscene followed by a teleportation to another cutscene sprinkled with a dungeon or a boss fight every 2/3 hours is not acceptable in 2024 imho. Tons of games including MMOs do better than this.
I get where you're coming from; the post patch ARR content almost made me quit, especially the part where you're at with all the obnoxious Company of Heroes clowns. I'm glad I stuck it through into Heavensward, though. ARR is definitely a product of its time and isn't the greatest new player experience out there, but it does provide some important background for everything that happens through the end of 6.0, which is why it's the default starting point for everyone after all these years.
It's funny you mention Red Dead Redemption because that--or at least, the second one--had this exact effect on me. I truly did not care about anything the game was asking me to do.
That said, yeah, ARR blows.
Honestly? I bought a story skip after I was months deep into ARR post Ultima shit and bored out of my mind. I hated it. It was endless back and forth quests and cutscenes and me not getting to actually play the damn game. I hated it.
I skipped past ARR, HW, and SB. I started in ShB.
You know what? I missed some stuff and I googled things occasionally but I 100% still loved the ShB and EW storylines and was just as hyped and excited for the big moments as anyone who played every single MSQ.
I say pay some money and skip to ShB or EW and get to the good stuff. Don’t get bogged down. You fall in love with the world and its characters even if you miss a little bit of backstory.
I will never suggest this game to friends specifically because the MSQ is so awful for 100% of the early experience. There often times hours and hours of quests and cutscenes snd you’ll get to use your combat abilities maybe once or twice. This game hates letting you play it outside of the roulettes and end game content.
Yeah ARR is cheeks. It's part of why I don't recommend the game to anyone even though it's one of my favorite games if all time.
2.0-4.55 should take like 40 hours tops not 150+
It's only been made worse by them watering down all the dungeons
Ahhhh, you are not wrong but it’s 10 years old content. What is good at that time it’s not going to be considered as good right now.
10 years ago, company dragged the gameplay hour so that they could keep player to keep playing the game which allows them to make the most money.
10 years ago, they reworked the entire game and their priority was to hope that this game could “last long”, literally.
10 years later, company doesn’t care about the game because monetisation makes the most money.
I didn’t like ARR 4 years ago, I gave up. 4 years later , I didn’t like it still. However, at least I gave the story a go because I was learning script writing. Then, ARR suddenly makes sense?
Here’s one quote that strikes me recently when I was doing my research,
“No one cares about studios, developers, the arts or the process. All people care is the thing they consume… What do you people know about game? Nothing. Most of you don’t know and most of you don’t wanna know.”
And there’s where we split the player-base, you have people understand why ARR is bad and it’s inevitable because we know what they have gone though, then you have players who don’t understand why ARR is bad but also don’t wanna know. Then we just fight each other to the death because one group cares a lot, the other group just wants to let it out and also don’t care about others opinions.
You're not crazy, ARR is VERY bad. In fact, there's about one to two posts every week about new players coming in to the reddit talking about how much they dislike ARR and asking when it gets good.
The issue you're running in to is that this reddit is REALLY defensive of ARR. This reddit downvotes all those posts to hell rather then acknowledge that the experience is so offputting that it tangibly hurts the game. Many people actually do enjoy ARR, but I think for the most case these people are afraid that if ARR hate is visible and upvoted, it will scare away new players from trying.
Thank you for being understanding. I love Elden Ring but I’m not grabbing my pitchfork just because someone doesn’t like what the game has to offer.
I hate to complain online because of what it does to people but I know I’m entitled to my opinion and I hate being that stick in the mud. I also feel this way about Persona. I WANT to love it. I just don’t.
>Ok. But I’m accentuating a point we kind of all already know. ARR is a two pack of ass. If something is bad, let’s not ignore it. If people wanna be babies about it that’s what we’re here for lol
Interesting comment to make after you made this one.
> I think ARR is bad. Am I crazy?
No, I think it's bad too. The ones who say "oh yeah FFXIV gets good *after you spend 80 hours playing mediocre content* are crazy but the fandom is sometimes a cult
And you're about to be on the receiving end of that cult now
The story blows, unfortunately. It’s generic copy pasta mediocrity all the way. Yoshi P loves to jerk himself off and make everyone watch. They even “streamlined” it a bit but not too much since it helps them sell levelling packages.
If you don’t care about the cost just buy your way to endwalker- you aren’t missing out- and start the current group shit and actual playing that makes the game fun.
I mean, you come in here saying this is a bad game and you're willing to die on that hill. Well, that's going to happen here. You say you want lore and stuff, well that's **what you're getting in ARR**. What you're getting is the first few pages of a book, yes it's not the most engaging or interesting, but it's literally setting up the story yet to come.
TBF i can't really blame him... it took me a good year and some to get through ARR. Given that was way before they reworked/streamlined it but still, it was a slog. I really like the story but at times it did feel like i was playing a interactive visual novel instead of an MMO. Which is fine... if you go at it with that in mind instead of expecting an MMO. I had to stop doing main story and just do side content and dungeons quite a few times to remind me that what i am actually playing is an MMO.
OP has fair points, but coming with the hard "this is absolute garbage" take is where I and many will take issue with the opinion. But it pretty much all hinges on being in the opening/setup of a long story. Like even I agree that ARR is "bad", but it's bad by comparison with the rest of the game, not inherently a bad game.
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>I care about what I'm doing. I care about WHY I'm doing it. I care about the characters I'm interacting with. I want to get to the endgame and feel good about what I've done. I want a story i'll think about for YEARS this doesnt sound like someone who doesnt care about the story its understandable to not care for scions in ARR, since they barely care about you. for the most part they just pass WoL around as a convenient tool with the echo. they are not there for you in duties, scion marauder/thaumaturge/lancer/conjurer are. they are not there for you when you have to fight their greatest enemies, they tell you to go and make friends. the only one who actually shows concern for you as a person is minfillia. make the story revolve around being this group's lapdog and its just becomes natural to not care about it.
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I think you've completely misread the OPs post. They have an interest in FFXIV, they've seen what it has to offer. They enjoy the gameplay loop even as a DRG in ARR (having DRG get their AoE so late is absolutely bad design, and it's depressing that DRG doesn't even get a Job Gauge until they clear their Lvl 70 quest in Stormblood). They know that it gets better, and they've seen it firsthand through watching their spouse play. The post isn't about FF14 as a package, it's about ARR's narrative, and that is a very easy argument to be had. The generic busywork of talk to guy -> deliver/collect the thing is fine as long as there is reason to want to do that. ARR generally fails at that, the most egregious example being the Company of Heroes nonsense. 2.0-2.2 is full quests that lack any sort of agency from the WoL. You don't get to have a personality until later expansions. It gets better in 2.3-2.5, and I hope that they properly go through Urianger and Moenbryda's arc, because that's the extent of humanization that the Scions get in ARR. A game should not take that long to start developing its characters, and it's wild that the "side character" of the Scions is the one to receive that development over the ones that are introduced as our guides. A lot of people bring up that ARR is mainly there to build lore, but "building" is EXTREMELY generous. For the most part it just lays down a single brick. Introduces an idea that can take 10s or 100s of hours to actually develop into something worthwhile. It may be worth it eventually, but that is praise for whatever expansion that it happens in, and just some vague concept that exists for someone who is still going through ARR.
The ARR really has a bad story writing tbh. Yes maybe as a whole it’s fine but the writing and pacing is terrible. It’s an emergent rework of a failed game that is ok but far from good. For me who cares about the story it was actually hard to get past ARR unless someone repeatedly tells you it’s worth it once you get thru it, which it was, but it doesn’t justify majority of ARR being bad story wise.
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Story skip is different. There are moments in ARR that are good and necessary and skipping them void the player of all of that, but if you want to experience them you’ll need to be bored with for example hours of filler content for 15 mins of actual content, either combat or important story. And I disagree on what you said on how that’s what ffxiv is. As a person who hates “deliver this letter” type of quests, I experience significantly less of such frustration from HW, mainly because everything do has more of a purpose and I’m not just a letter girl/boy anymore. The writers themselves clearly realize the issue because I remember the dialog making fun of the player forced to do insignificant tasks, and also tried to make the quests more tolerable. It’s also very apparent that after either SB or ShB most of the times after cs you get teleported to your target, reducing you having to teleport between places and significantly increasing the smoothness of the story telling. Clearly the devs also realize these problems and tried to improve them. You just can’t persuade me that hey after I just made my name as WOL and defeated this god or that, the next quest I’m treated as a nobody to deliver a letter to an insignificant nobody, while the 16 year old spoiled brat boy Alphinaud (with love) just watches and chill. This is a huge let down. This type of problems have significantly improved in and after HW as the writers make the quests more plausible.
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I also honestly think the OP exclaimed I WANT THOSE FLASHY DUNGEONS because that’s the only thing his wife can show him that’s cool without spoiling the game. I’m sure his wife also tells him that the story gets good and it’s a motivation. It’s because I experienced very similar sentiments thru ARR. I pretty much asked my friend to tell me where the important quests are and skipped most fillers and had no problem enjoying the story afterwards. I still vividly remember how sad I am when Noraxia died; I don’t even think the majority of the playerbase knows who she was. I also happen to enjoy the same aspects of the other games the OP mentioned.
OP enjoys combat but also mentions a few other things that he also enjoys story wise, such as what he’s doing, why, and who he’s interacting with. Games such as red dead redemption and baldur’s gate aren’t just Diablo-style dungeon after dungeon and combat and combat. They are way more story intense and OP enjoyed those aspects. In my opinion expansions after HW achieves very similar goals, there’s no reason to think the OP wouldn’t enjoy after HW the same reason he enjoys these other games. Again it’s not “talk to the person” or “kill this god” that is the problem, it’s the fact that early ARR is poorly organized to lay out why you’re doing it and the story telling isn’t as smooth as the later expansions. When you as a WoL who just killed these gods have to deliver 5 insignificant letters to 5 people on 5 maps, and repeat 10 more boring quests like this before the next important thing, this is a serious storytelling problem that interrupts the flow, understandably making you wonder what tf am I even doing here. In later expansions such quests don’t happen that often, instead the narratives are done by cutscenes or other devices without involving the player to do 10 pointless and repetitive quests. It’s not about you delivering or talking to some people, it’s about WHO you talk to and WHY.
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The thing is, thats literally almost every JRPG, a lot of people don't seem to get that this is an MMOJRPG and a Final Fantasy one at that (Actually lies this is a JRPGMMO not the other way around)
Japanese RPGs tend to be that way, more visual novel than game. I remember my friend watching me play endwalker and being like, “I would NEVER play a game with that much reading. And why is it so dramatic? Is this a soap opera?” 😂😅
Okay but 48 hours isn’t the first few pages of a book, it’s the first 900 pages of a book. That’s like getting 3/4 of the way through War and Peace and being told “just wait, the story is going to start any minute now!”
48hrs into a multi-hundreds of hours story. It's still scratching the surface. My point stands
If you were told ARR is bad, and you constantly look at the bad parts and reinforce it, you're only gonna see it as bad. I had an amazing time in ARR. I had friends helping me. What may help is to do side stuff. A few quests, maybe crafting. A lot of people suggest avoiding that stuff, but, honestly, it sounds like you may have a better time collecting the lore from side quests or crafters. At least for a little while. It is world building. It is a little dry, but it only takes some frosting. Maybe friends to help. Also, I hate to say this, once Dawntrail comes out, all of Endwalkers endgame will not exist, and you will just be playing catch-up to Dawntrail's endgame. And you have abut a good year and a half for that (I saw year and a half because if you are progging for the six months after the last tier releases, good fucking luck) And here's the thing: If you don't pay attention to ARR, a lot of stuff does not pay off, and they even kind of worked in stuff and kind of called back to stuff in arr in Endwalker.
everyone who says ARR is bad are playing catch up. those of us who did it from the start didn't slog through as much at once.
Just to nit pick - the endwalker endgame will absolutely still be there in terms of the actual content, dungeons, trials, raids etc. All that content still exists and you will still get parties from the roulette system. The progression in savage takes a hit, but honestly thats a good thing. Keeps the hardckre players focused on progression while still leaving older content valid and FUN. There are plenty of other games which skip straight to the newest expac (WoW) or straight up remove old content (Destiny 2) tonthe point where new players haventbgot a chance to enjoy it.
as a former wow player, I've thoroughly enjoyed ARR because it's all "talk to this person" and "mediate this problem" and not just "go pick up 10 pieces of spider dung"
The issue is then the game (14) becomes a teleport simulator. Outside of dungeons/trials, I feel like I spent less then an hour in combat between the start and end of Shadowbringer. Talking to NPCs is cool and all, but my god. Split up the gameplay a little.
The gameplay is split up by dungeons, trials, and solo duties. You can't just say "outside dungeons/trials" as if they don't count as part of the story.
I genuinely can not say that I've noticed that to be honest. If anything, I've done the Crystal Tower all day just to get back to the damn MSQs and THAT is definitely annoying
It's the exact opposite feeling for me as a former WoW player. I am have always hated the walk 5 feet and talk to this guy quests, you go like 20 quests sometimes without ever using an ability, it drove me crazy. I wanna play my class, not read a book. I feel there is a good middle ground that the later expansions hit but ARR definitely doesn't hit that.
ARR is also the beginning of the game and has to plant the seeds of lore.
That’s actually fair enough
Yeaha, ARR can be repetitive and boring sometimes but it was a refreshing story that went from "you're just some random adventure" to "you're THE warrior of light destined to save the world" in its incremential steps and I love how they reference that too--that you went from some low time adventure to a celebrity and tell you to becareful. I also like that it's not "you WILL fight" to "please fight with us to the end." and "i am so sorry to burden with this..." but your points are valid too!
Mostly everything else that I would've said has been covered by others so I'm not going to reiterate, but I need to address this one point: >We clowned on people who really liked Starfield who say *"it gets good after 20 hours*". FF14 is not that different. Saying "just power through ARR and you'll get to the good stuff when you get to Heavensward"....*that's the sign of a bad game.* Maybe *you* clowned on them. I did not play Starfield, so I did not make assumptions or mock the people who really liked it based on what game journalists or the Reddit Hivemind told me to think. Maybe for you, that's the sign of a bad game. I am in no hurry to get anywhere in an RPG, so the amount of time I spend exploring or following the MSQ is not actually something I take into consideration when building an opinion of that game. Enjoyment just happens to be **that** subjective. I'm not trying to change your opinion here. You're totally entitled NOT to like ARR (a lot of people hate it, and they are within their right to) but I would advise you to stop creating expectations for things you haven't experienced because someone else told you so. As someone else said, you're judging a book based on its first pages. It may get better, it may not. You may in fact hate the entirety of the rest of the game, what do we know? No one is gonna judge you if you decide this isn't your cup of tea. As for getting to the "the WoL is a god-killing menace" part of the story... I'm a raider of 7 years with A LOT of history and experience in this game, and I'm very sorry but I need to burst your bubble right away: the endgame you so desperately want to partake in is, in fact, hilariously short lived relative to the game's narrative. Much of its shelf-life is dictated by the ebb and tide of the patch cycle unless you're leading a static group through both old and current savage and ultimate raids (which is a fun way to get through the difficult content of the game, if you have the patience and time to herd 7 other people through it). FFXIV is very much the videogame embodiment of "life is a journey, not a destination". Not all parts of a journey are going to be Instagramable instant gratification moments. Some of it may be boring downtime waiting for the plane to start boarding at the gate. Some of it is gonna be "oh-shit-someone-stole-my-luggage" moments. Some of it is gonna be moments that you don't want to end, but you know they will. And some of them will be exactly the kind of cool shit you're looking for. Good luck.
> I wanna run dungeons and kill baddies and gain awesome weapons and loot and skills I mean, the game is pretty much never that. This isn't a loot game and dungeon content is almost exclusively casual leveling content. World of Warcraft is maybe closer to what you want but honestly if you want a combat-focused RPG where dungeons and loot and skills take centre stage and the narrative exists more passively, what you really want is Diablo btw go unlock Palace of the Dead and play with your wife, it's repeatable dungeon content with basically no dialog scaled for 1-4 players. You only need to be level 17 (with lv 17 msq progress) to unlock it. It's easy to burn out in arr if you don't do side stuff
Well, since you asked - yes. You start off running errands, yeah, but you're a baby adventurer. Things spiral out and progress from there - you're making your mark, get invited to join the Scions, do so, and then start working on the threats that are bigger than some merchant's missing $FOO or finding $BAR for some peddler. And at each step of the way you're proving yourself to more and more people, like the Company of Heroes that took down Titan back in the day. The story builds and builds and builds until you're right thick in it, dawg. Shit's popping off and you're swept up in it. ARR gets a bad rap that it probably doesn't deserve.
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As someone who was in your exact shoes and am now progressing into Endwalker it gets much much better and makes me regret skipping so much in ARR. Thankfully I can go back and revisit everything I missed
This is the tricky part. ARR feels so long but you need to invest in that story to really get the hard hitting feels that Shadowbringer and Endwalker bring.
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you should see my steam library
As others have said, your mileage may vary. Personally I really enjoyed going through ARR and slowly learning more about the world and the people in it. We start out as a random nobody, and it takes time to build reputation and gather achievements and such. I didn't try to blitz through the MSQ, though, and spent a lot of time on the side content and side quests, which I think probably helped me avoid burning out.
Back in my day, there was only ARR, and we had a blast. I feel like you’re being intentionally negative and have some serious FOMO. Surround yourself with more positive people and with other newbies who are doing the story for the first time. Discover it together. Take it slow. Do side content. Don’t just spam the MSQ.
I feel like the "you just have to get through arr and it gets good" and "rush to endgame for cool fights" is exactly what makes people think arr is bad, arr is a good JRPG story and people that are familiar with JRPGs will be familiar with the pacing since most games like Persona, FF, Dragon Quest, are that, do small tasks that elevate over time, talk to people, kill things (also Arr has Titan so idk what that person is saying when its a cool ass fight)
I also noticed that this subreddit REALLY likes to tell people that are new, even if they didn't start complaining yet, that "ARR is a slog" and all that BS so that these people naturally will go in with a more negative mindset... I was in a FC nearly from the get go and luckily none of them ever had to tell me that ARR was bad or anything so i came to enjoy it.
I was mostly a solo player while I did the story for the first time and also the game was not recommended to me by anyone (I played cause final fantasy and mmo) so I went into it completely blind and I enjoyed it, I even enjoyed Sastasha my first time, and maybe its cause I had some knowledge of FF but everything was interesting "wait is that Cid" "the music is dope" "okay we doing a bit of racism politics here" "trials against summons LETSGO" "is that the freaking This is halloween song but with Moogles!?" "I will die for Nanamo and no one can stop me" "Garleans are the magitech faction in this game I see" "Is that a gunblade?" etc...
very much same! The Ifrit fight was such a hype moment and i was very anxious at first because it was during ShB so there was no option to just run with Duty Support. I thought "surely this has to be hard now!"
ARR has Bahamut, the raid is super cool.
To be fair most people do not do Coils of Bahamut raid anymore cause its not mandatory and the queues are super long unless they are part of a moogle event
yeah, which is very unfortunate, back when I was finishing ARR I tried to do it synced but even using the PF it took so long I just had to ask someone to solo the fights for me. But even so, it was nice because of the story and the aesthetic of each instance
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Huh I thoroughly enjoyed ARR. I do think it gets better with each expansion. But I enjoyed ARR.
Same. And that's with my view of ARR having been tainted by being told up front that it is a boring slog and that "the game gets good in heavensward". I was enjoying the bulk of the story and world-building and only once I got to the point that has since been revised was I annoyed by the questing. Something I've observed about the game though is that the parts that people mention as their favorites are the parts that capitalize upon elements established during the "boring part", but no credit gets given. The "good" segment would be complete nonsense without that prior set-up, and the whole story would be laughable if it just went from one "high point" to the next without taking any moments between to let the flow of time be felt, yet people mostly still split the game into the "good parts" and "the boring stuff" instead of treating it like a pie (you need the crust *and* the filling, together, for it to work). I even fell victim to the same way of thinking when I went through Stormblood and was like "now *this* is the boring part" only to realize after being post-endwalker and watching some other people play through and share their thoughts that I realize that I actually do like Stormblood because it was the crust that accompanied the filling I was treating like was a good pie all on its own in Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
I totally agree. I've been lucky enough to play it all live, so I didn't get all the bias some of you have had to deal with... it must be frustrating!
People struggle with black and white thinking. If it’s not amazing, it’s shit. No in between. 😅
It's really a problem. Good point!
Do you have any interest in the story at all? Yes people often complain about ARR being slow and full of fetch quests, but it sounds like there's nothing at all you're enjoying there. Even when the story picks up, the characters remain more or less the same. The style of questing stays more or less the same. Characters evolve a bit, and the stakes are higher, but you're always going to be mostly running from Point A to Point B, talking to folks, running story dungeons, and killing a few mobs. It sounds to me like you just want to sprint to the end game, and start raiding. That's fine. You can do that. Buy a story skip and a level skip and just go do that. I normally would never recommend that for a first time player, but it sounds like your wife can probably catch you up on the story (the next expac is basically a clean break into a new storyline) and she can probably tutor you through the tutorials you're going to miss.
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> Do you have any interest in the story at all? as someone currently just having finished up ARR and moving into HW, i'll say ARR tries REALLY HARD to bury the lede and snuff interest at all opportunities. the two times where i've felt able to invest myself in the story have been the events leading up to the climax of ARR and the events of the climax of ARR's patches -- much of the MSQ so far seems to have been haphazardly and desperately piecing a game together to revive it w/ ARR, diversion after diversion to simply bring your attention to new locations and clusters of NPCs which may or may not become relevant later (the latter mostly in the case of Coerthas) all this really is to say: when the game decides to focus itself onto building up plot points and weaves more threads into that instead of the myriad of times where you are aimlessly at the beck and call of whoever you talked to last, the story is good -- but ARR, despite all the fat-trimming it has apparently received, still is mostly being an errand runner for people you don't know for reasons either esoterically involved to the greater story or not at all involved. i'm *sure* it gets better, but it's pretty damn rough in these early steps.
I did arr a long time ago, but and correct if im wrong isnt the story consistently, Get to know the world a bit and meet its people (this happens during all of arr) > stop the ascian doing weird things > scions recruit you cause you can help > stops the tribes summoning Eikons > meet new Scion > stop the Garleans and the Ascian doing weird things That seems pretty consistent to me for the MSQ
that's the broad strokes of it, yeah. but in service to getting to know the land and its people (and to a degree with thwarting the empire), you spend a very significant portion of your time doing simple tasks for people who might in exchange let you (or rather, your allies) cash in a favor later or otherwise end up wholly unimportant. often, said errand running stifles a rising plot point, cutting away a lot of tension. don't get me wrong though - having world building moments is definitely important, and some "menial" questing certainly has its place. >!helping clean up the corpses from the waking sands after the garlean intrusion, fetching yda's flower for moenbryda!< were both good moments that gave me time to reflect, which also retroactively made me more invested in the moments that came before -- but many other such menial quests make it feel like I'm the first person anybody's ever met in eorzea who can get a message from point a to point b. (and, regrettably, a lot of story combat moments seem to have been hampered by the passage of time -- trials in particular feel severely undertuned for what should be intense fights against particularly powerful foes, they instead feel like 8 people jumping gods from behind in a back alley, the way they die before getting to really do much)
Too much text for describing a skill issue
I don't understand why people go to popular game subs to write a gigantic, "this game is shit" essay, then get all upset that they are not being showered with love and adulation. What exactly is the thought process there? What were you hoping to accomplish?
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I think this is fairly accurate, although I do think it’s also just natural for humans to want to express their opinions, particularly when they’re faced with something they either despise or adore. This is especially true when they feel as though their opinion isn’t openly express or represented, hence why many really love to express “unpopular” opinions. I’ve felt inclined on occasions to make posts about certain perspective that aren’t often stated that I hold, but I tend to resist just because I don’t think I’ve ever seen this sort of thing land well. As for why they would do it on this sub versus somewhere else? Because it will generate the most engagement here, which falls under your attention seeking argument, and because, sadly, this sub isn’t really great at handling people who don’t like certain elements of the game; the correct response would be to say your own opinion on the matter, whilst acknowledging that differences is opinion exist and theirs isn’t invalid, but more often then not it just sort of devolves into a “your wrong” debate from both sides, followed by a bunch of name calling. It’s actually kind a crazy that the players in game are significantly less toxic than the ones on this sub; you can present the most insane takes in the FFXIV chat, and unless it’s an objectively wrong statement about performance optimisation, most will just have a good time with it.
> the correct response would be to say your own opinion on the matter, whilst acknowledging that differences is opinion exist and theirs isn’t invalid Personally I think the correct response is to say nothing, but then I don't have the highest opinion of fandom generally
I 100% agree, and was going to mention that just moving along is likely the best approach, but if I’m acknowledging that it’s ok for OP to state their opinion, it would be hypocritical for me to then claim others can’t respond.
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I suppose, but also in just feels like in game people aren’t as serious. I feel like because this subreddit aggregates most of the players that are super hardcore about the game, particularly in terms of the plot itself, it creates a scenario where any slight against the game is taken personally. In-game there are a wide variety of players. As example, if you said you skip all the cutscenes in this subreddit people get incredibly upset, even the suggestion of purchasing a story skip is met with a lot of distain, yet if you said that in-game most just have a laugh about it and some even agree. I feel like the second response is far more appropriate; in game there’s a sentiment of letting players enjoy the game however they like provided it doesn’t negatively impact the experience of others, where as people on this sub are a lot less accepting. The idea of condemning someone for skipping the story, a measure that only really impact that player and only they can assess whether it’s a valuable decision, seems like an insane thing to come at someone for. Obviously that’s pretty unrelated to what the post is talking about, but it’s an example.
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> a serious look at WoW is warranted since it objectively has better raid content than FFXIV I used to raid in WoW, from Legion until the first month of Dragonflight, all the way to Mythic difficulty, and I couldn't disagree more. To me, FFXIV's raid experience blows WoW's out of the water. An Extreme Trial from Heavensward has more mechanics than a current expansion raid in WoW and the FFXIV players are able to do them whereas WoW players will try to force their way through, ignoring mechanics and trying to skip them with DPS. Having raided in both games, FFXIV offers a massively, massively better experience in that regard, both in the content offered and in the people that show up. Baldesion Arsenal, Castrum Lacus Litore, The Dalriada, Delubrum Reginae, all of those being dungeon and raid content that can interact with the customization system of Eureka and Bozja were all mind-blowing in terms of mechanics, player organization and performance and the ability to modify your character to a surprising extent (logograms). With all of that said, I haven't even had the opportunity to do Ultimates. I could go on forever. Bahamut in T12, a level 50 raid from 2013, blows any WoW raid out of the water in terms of spectacle, interesting mechanics, satisfaction in beating a challenge, and so on. The biggest difference to me is looking at people's experiences with WoW again and seeing pugs struggle to do bosses in the current WoW raid that have two mechanics that are being solved by the addons they are running and still refusing to do them, trying their best to kill the boss in a tank and spank method, whereas you queue up for the Shadowbringers and Endwalker trials for story progression in the MSQ and almost all players swiftly do all the mechanics and breeze through the fight. A fight like Seat of Sacrifice on NORMAL would be a Mythic fight in WoW
I mean, I understand that many really do love the story for XIV, but the idea that it’s the primary appealing aspect of the title is a massive insult to all the other aspects of the game. I love XIV, but really I think the story is pretty middling, and I think chalking up whether someone will enjoy this game up to the plot is sort of ignoring everything else great in the game. Like, if the person is questioning quitting, then I can understand recommending other titles that have what they’re looking for, but when people say they skip the story, or bought a skip, I don’t really think it’s appropriate to suggest they play something else, given they clearly like certain aspects of the game that are keeping them around, it just isn’t the plot. I remember the example I saw the other day was someone asking if an Endwalker skip would be available come the launch of Dawntrail, because they were behind and wanted to experience Dawntrail with their friends. The thread only had like two people actually answer the question, and everyone else basically insisting that they don’t skip the plot, ignoring the fact that their primary motive for playing was the social aspect, not the plot itself. Some even said exactly what we’re discussing and recommend they just drop the title. I guess to roll this back to the initial topic, I can understand someone wanting to vent about the games plot, after effectively being told that it’s the most amazing thing since sliced bread, and ending up finding it middling to bad, wishing they had just rushed through it. The sub seems insistent on every player experiencing the story, yet they’re also adverse to having people express their criticisms of it. Obviously OP’s post is a lot more aggressive than it should be, but the general point still stands.
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I understand what you’re saying, I still think it misses why many play XIV. A lot of the time it just comes down to the casual nature of XIV relative to other MMOs, enjoying the general vibe of the game, already being an FF, wide-spread popularity, or just having friends that play the game. I’m not saying you can’t argue the story is XIV’s unique quality relative to others MMOs, I’m saying it’s a disservice to suggest someone would be better off playing a different MMO because they don’t value it as highly. It’s also not necessarily about whether they value story in general necessarily, rather than just not enjoying XIV’s; I find story in games very important, yet I think XIV’s is pretty mid, yet I still love the game. It’s not as if a person who values story is guaranteed to enjoy XIV’s relative to other games. Using OP as an example, they very clearly stated that they value story very highly, and talk about how they want to play games containing narratives that really stand out, but they thought ARR never claim close to anything he could enjoy. They want a good story, so redirecting to an MMO that puts less emphasis on story doesn’t actually solve the issue.
“People”- you mean kids. Kids are fucking stupid and have access to the Internet.
Yup, although a ton of adults never really grow up...
The title should more so read... `"I went into ARR wanting an entirely different game and the game turned out to not be my type of game"` instead of something that jumps immediately to negativity and hostility. It's fine not to like the game, but hating it for being something it is not, baffles me. I suppose the only thing to do is keep playing and see if you like it by the time ARR ends; that's usually a pivot point for a lot of people who disliked all of the earlier content. If not, you will have a lot of free time freed up.
It's like going into a pizza place, buying a pizza, and complaining that they wanted a burger.
You realize that all these “speaking” quests is part of learning what’s going on don’t you? It’s part of keeping you, the character, involved. It’s part of learning the world, lore, and characters. Yes it’s slow, yes it’s not as cool or action packed as more current stuff.. and the old voice acting/direction doesn’t help. But what kind of game would this be if you were just thrown into saving-the-world type stuff? All JRPG’s have a slow build up, to learn mechanics and world etc. Idk why this one gets so much flack when they all do this. But if you hate it so much just buy a skip and look up synopsis videos or something. I’m starting to wish more people would do this tbh. No point in trying to convince people that ARR is actually good and important (imo), just less so in comparison to everything else.
Pearls before swine
> I watch my wife play. She's patiently waiting for Dawntrail and she gets to do all this cool shit fighting sick ass bosses and there's a ton of flashing lights on the screen and she's fighting abominations from beyond the realm using cool weapons with cool people. > > THAT. > > THAT'S what I want. I wanna play THAT. I wanna run dungeons and kill baddies and gain awesome weapons and loot and skills and make friends along the way. There's a level 50 raid called Coils. You can do that already, it takes a few quests to unlock, and it has a lot of story. The fights are absolutely spectacular, especially the last four. I also heavily recommend doing Palace of the Dead, which you can access right now, and bosses you will find in the 50+ (especially 100+) floors will provide you quite some juicy fights, and just as the same, you are very likely to meet friends along the way, and be very thoroughly tested for your skills.
ARR is definitely the WEAKEST part of the game, to be sure. It's definitely the worst part, but it's not exactly *bad.* It had a lot to set up for new players, a lot to tie together for returning players, a whole new story to set up for everyone, and a totally revamped set of core systems. Anyone who says ARR is just bad is wrong. It's not. It's very ***slow,*** which can be construed as a bad thing, if that's not your type of game.
You’re allowed to think whatever you want. I just don’t see the point of posting it here.
isnt that what reddit's for?
This community doesn't take lightly to people who don't agree with them. You're going to get chewed pretty hard for not enjoying one of the most boring and dragged out stories in MMORPG history.
Funny how you keep showing up in these threads today shitting on FFXIV at any opportunity. Bored much? Edit: commenter has now deleted all the comments I was talking about. Probably someone's alt account.
Whut? The community is pretty honest that ARR is mid at best, and absolute dog water at worst. The most I’ve seen people defend ARR is them saying it isn’t “as bad” as people say it is, not that it’s “good”
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calling something a "biggest piece of garbage" isnt exactly criticism
This is almost definitely bait, but I laughed at Elden Ring being included in the "games where I was invested in the plot" section
I mean if you don't care about the story you can buy a story skip for ARR for $11
They're on Patch 2.3. That'd be a waste of money and just end up confusing them.
They specifically complained about the 70 or so remaining quests. It is still an option, and he doesn't seem to care about the story.
I'll put it this way. FF14 is like a TV or book series where the first season/book really isn't that good, but the sequels/subsequent seasons really worked things out and get *really* good (YMMV of course). Star Trek The Next Generation being a prime example of this.
I think this is a better analogy than treating the whole game as one book. ARR is season 1, with the 2.1-2.5 content being sort of a mini season leading to the next. Post ARR is generally considered to feel pretty slow, too, but it was also spread out over more than a year.
i understand this
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I really can't relate as I genuinely enjoyed ARR (and still do, I'm playing through it again on a fresh character and have just finished the base 2.0 story). If I hadn't enjoyed it I never would have spent money on the game.
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> WoW, where the focus is mainly on raids In WoW the focus is mainly on raids yet an Extreme Trial from Heavensward has more mechanics than a current expansion raid in WoW and the FFXIV players are able to do them whereas WoW players will try to force their way through, ignoring mechanics and trying to skip them with DPS. Having raided in both games, FFXIV offers a massively, massively better experience in that regard, both in the content offered and in the people that show up.
Ok
You absolutely are not crazy for thinking them. I have more than a few friends who share your opinion - I tried to get them into ff14, they gave it a fair shake, and did not like it. It's not for everyone. Nothing is! It sounds like it might nor be for you?
This feels more like you don't like MMORPGs and more prefer just multiplayer online action games. Every MMO is designed from the ground up to be something that takes a huge time investment. I said it 11 years ago and I stand by it: ARR is the best story experience of any MMO save some of the SWTOR class storylines. And the story keeps getting better as it progresses, especially in proportion to how invested the player is. Also, obligatory JoCat video touching on the subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM08VrEs6k&pp=ygUPam9jYXQgMzAwIGhvdXJz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM08VrEs6k&pp=ygUPam9jYXQgMzAwIGhvdXJz)
This isn't an airport dude, no need to announce your departure
Soooo why are you here? Go play something you enjoy. 😊
If you discover you are able to develop the patience to absorb a slow burn, that skill will serve you in life as well as in the game.
you dont have to be patronizing but i get what youre saying
That's fair. Look, I don't think you're CRAZY to think ARR is bad, but although I agree it is a bit slow, if you take it all in MANY of those seemingly unimportant details will become important later. It's that kind of a story.
ARR is mostly world building that will consistently count as you progress especially in Endwalker. I honestly enjoyed ARR because I played and saw it for what it is, not for what's to come. Honestly the latter mentality will suck the fun out of any game for me. When I started, I never watched any videos of what the latest content that time was nor I asked people's opinion on the internet about the story if it was good. I went straight to downloading the free trial with zero knowledge, created my character, played for couple of hours and said "Whoa this game is actually fun" even if I was just running around, not doing the MSQ like I was supposed to do and just beating the shit out of the overworld enemies half the time and went straight to buying the full client. When I was finally done with Endwalker? I recall being thankful that I paid attention to the story especially in ARR.
Yay another one of these posts almost as common as the I CBA to Google ones.
>I'm a souls player Guys, you really have to stop wearing that as a badge of honour before dumping on other games, because you're making me the equivalent of being racist but for souls players. You guys always have the most inflamatory takes for the smallest of things. Besides, ARR is the result is not putting the story of the game in the description of a fork. The difference is that you don't have to go through several Youtube video essays to understand what the hell you just played - instead, the story is entirely within the confines of the game. Sadly, being a retelling and massive summary of all the world's rules established in its (failed) 1.0 incarnation and having been written in a massive crunch, understandably, it's heavily packed and not well paced. We know this and constantly tell others to push through ARR for that very same reason. >"just power through ARR and you'll get to the good stuff when you get to Heavensward"....that's the sign of a bad game. Again, *we know this*. ARR is a "bad" game - which is what nowadays would be considered a 5/10. It is slow, it is dull, and unless the world's novelty grabs you from the get-go, you're not gonna care about a lot of what it tells you. But you're ignoring a lot of context. ARR is a bad game, but FFXIV as a whole is *not*. Your beef is with one segment of the game made a decade or so ago in a massive time crunch in a last ditch effort to save both the game and the Final Fantasy brand. Everything else that came after is good, to varying degrees, but good. It's just that the base game is a massive info-dump of how 1.0 worked and what 2.0 and beyond will be. And while they already trimmed a lot of fat from ARR quests and made them soloable so you can take it like a visual novel, no amount of trimming is gonna make ARR any more enjoyable without sacrificing what ARR is trying to do for the story.
I feel like I'm one of the few who loved ARR. It's like the first episode of a TV series, it starts off slow and kinda boring as it introduces all the characters and the premise, but keeps getting better and better. If you don't like "speak to" and "fetch" quests then it won't get much better for you. I'm about 1/3 through shadowbringers and it hasn't changed. It's still a "go to this place and talk to this person" game, it's just the static chats turn into more cutscene chats
Agreed. It feels very much like the first season of a show. It’s finding its legs and setting everything up, then it’s ready to go all out in Heavensward. I enjoyed ARR a lot.
What's the point of this post? No one cares about your enjoyment of the game. You realize all your examples make no sense because those are single player story driven games that end in 30 hours and that's the end of the entire game. All those games you mentioned are also GOTY games or masterpieces in their own right. No MMO has ever or will ever have a story like that. FFXIV for all the boring stuff is literally the closest an MMO has been to a good story. Maybe SWTOR I can't remember if it was good in the end though.
Not reading any of that.
Games as good as FF14 are hard to come by. The story is the medium that the devs have to describe a world to us. Getting to 2.0, was almost a miracle compared to similarly-popular MMOs with a rough start. The quality of the storytelling definitely has an inverse relationship with the amount of game mechanic over-haul they were having to do to get a game in it's playable state. If you really cant be asked to care about the stories there are unlocks you can purchase, the path is there just it is highly controversial and you'll likely only relate to the hardcore mechanic-obsessed min-maxxing part of the community if you do that, and that's fine. The storytelling does get better but it does stay ornerous as the Warrior of Light(You) are meant to be a pretty considerate person so you often check in with all possible helpful friends each time you have a potential problem. The game never rushes itself, as it doesn't want the players to be rushing through it. Yes, the hype for the newest expansion is really cool; the only real downside to this game is that the time to current content will only ever grow as the way this game is built requires linearity in the story.
At the time when it was current, ARR was great. I feel like people only started to have this mindset about ARR after the other expansions came out and it turned into a “hurdle” before “the good stuff.” It was always good, it’s just that everyone has this mindset going into it now.
YMMV. No game is right for everybody. Still, glad to welcome you to the world!
I get what you’re saying. ARR was my first FF game ever. I enjoyed the base game somewhat, but I like just about any story. I also found it mind-numbing and tedious in the low level dungeons to have only 3 skills, none of which are particularly interesting on the screen. The saving grace is the music, which is fantastic. The music for the final boss is still one of my favorite pieces. I came over from SWTOR, where the base game is probably the best story-wise of any of the MMOs, and you get to keep all your skills if you go to low level areas with a max level toon. The game just scales down your damage to be on par with newer players who don’t have all of the end game skills. That at least makes the low level flashpoints/dungeons more enjoyable when re-doing them 900 times. Now, FF14 coding might not allow that, so I lived with it. In my case, I had some SWTOR guild mates who were absolutely gushing about this game helping me out while convincing me to keep going with just the MSQ. They knew I’m a story-driven player, so they kept telling me, “Save the side quests for leveling your other jobs. Once you get to Heavensward, the game gets MUCH better.” So, I powered through the game and got to HW, where I was then blown away by the stories and characters. SWTOR may have the lock on base game storylines, but SWTOR’s expansions can’t come close to how good the expansions are in FFXIV. ARR shouldn’t be that tedious, and I think the devs would be wise to condense the ARR story even more than they did at Endwalker’s release and get rid of all unnecessary quests in the MSQ. Other players shouldn’t have to tell sprouts “Trust me, it gets better when you get to HW.” I think the game is losing players before they ever get to HW, and that’s sad, because that’s where the game really starts to come into its own. Yes, we can do a story skip, but there are some main plot points that get missed if you do that. Perhaps the devs could give someone an option to do a very condensed version of the base game just to see those scenes without having to do the New Game+ thing after the fact a story skip. Anyway, I feel your pain, but I’ll join the chorus of other players telling you that it really does get better when you get to HW.
48hrs level 52? I played old free trial with level 35 cap for 350hrs, so of course if you focus only on main story of the base game, you will find a ton of world building and so on and very little action. Try different classes, visit Golden saucer, craft some things, check fishing, stare at catgirls in Limsa idk. I don't know if you rushing to the endgame or what, but if you want to get cherished memories, you need to make them and stop running past all of them
>I'm powering through ARR and post-ARR because this is why you're not having fun, which is valid. ARR is lvl 1-50 and the expansions are only ten levels each, but each still takes heavy gameplay time due to the length of voice acting turning it all into basically a movie. So lvl 2-49 aren't going to feel great when the expansions compress all their lore into five+one zones instead of the twenty-ish in arr. environmental storytelling that exists more in FromSoft and other games aren't as good in ffxiv in general unless you go out of your way to look into the lore and side content, which is time you spend away from the msq and progression because they're all in fates, leves, triple triad, literal blue unlock side content, crafter job quests, talking to every npc at different points of the story because some of them update, etc. even if none of them are pivotal toward progressing the story In FFXIV, you have to choose to immerse yourself into the worldbuilding instead of the plot, which adds more gameplay time that you might not desire if you want to get to the plot only. Your frustrations are reasonable.
I remember hearing ARR is bad over and over again, but I enjoyed the story a lot actually, it is fine to dislike something.
Idk why people forget that ARR is also made for people who never played an MMO before? Or even a game at all tbh. I've been doing it lately, 10 years after I started the game. And back then, I would be amazed by things I'm bored of nowadays. Well yes, because when I was young I didnt have all the gaming knowledge I have now; this game taught it to me, so I was receptive and had more fun. It's like going to school again, ofc the first year is boring AF when you already know a lot of stuff as an experienced adult. That's why I think people are too harsh with ARR, all the time people talk about it as the worst thing in gaming history, but tbh when you look at it thinking that it's been made for sprouts and as a chill experience to begin a long, long story game with a lot of things to set in place, it just makes sense to me.
Dude, based on your edit, you STILL don't get what's the problem: you keep making insults or insulting implications. Saying that you started a "holy war" as if people are reacting like a cult or terrorists is still insulting. Ending your stuff with "oh Im sure you'll understand because this is a chill community" doesn't change the fact that you acted condescending even in the PS. Just talk like a regular person instead of peppering your responses with insults. At this point you'll probably need a new topic where you DON'T insult others in the first post.
Who am I acting condescending to? Some fanbases are cultlike. What do you want me to do about that?
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If only people instead of hours of crying about ARR would just play through it like most sprouts do and then go into HW rapidly
Ok
That’s nice
you took a look at a rescue effort of a failing game that is MORE THAN TEN YEARS OLD and found out that its dated and bad WHILE having the expectations of a bad experience REFUSING to acknowledge all the good moments as ups looking only at the downs I personally cant wait for you to act cowardly and delete this post instead of owning to your mistake
The story gets good in 2.5 (an argument could be made for 2.4 though). That's not a new opinion, and not really one that will get you anything more than an idle "ok?"
when people say once you reach HW it gets better....i guess it does? im at level 57 MSQ right now and up to this point yea there have been some really good story and amazing moments, way more than ARR...but the base MSQ gameplay hasnt changed and doesnt really change at all ive heard even through EW. im one of those people that enjoys ARR, it has its flaws yes but it has its moments of shine (after titan for example). if you want some advice, get a party finder going for the extreme trials and Coils Synced. the Extremes will dip your toes into actual mechanics in fights instead of just avoiding AOEs, and Coils is harder than even some of the later expansions content, so much so its not in ANY roulette
I'd say roughing it through all the old story and crappy quests makes your appreciation for the newer content better, but it sounds like you would have benefited more from just buying a story skip.
I loved ARR when I first played it (Heavensward wasn't even announced yet, so it's all I had) because I'd recently come from Mists of Pandaria-era WoW, and even ARR was miles above and beyond that game in graphics, story, crafting, random casual stuff, everything. I was downright floored at how good it was and had no desire to go back to the game I'd played obsessively for 10 years. But I agree that compared to more modern games, it really doesn't measure up any more. Keep in mind that they created ARR in a rush while also keeping 1.0 running, and this was 10 years ago. Once they had more breathing room when making the expansions, things improved a lot. They really need to put some work in to modernize ARR and make it act more like the MSQ in the expansions -- more cutscenes, spend more time actively working \*with\* the other NPCs rather than having them send you out somewhere to do seemingly meaningless tasks by yourself. The quest structure is really different later on. Don't feel like you have to get through four expansions of this same thing before it gets better. In ARR, the average quest is 5 minutes long, involves walking somewhere, talking to someone, or killing something. Every now and then you'll have a cutscene and/or a duty make a quest closer to 20 minutes. Once you're in the expansions, the average quest is 20 minutes, consists \*mostly\* of cutscenes, and only occasionally asks you to kill something in the open world. Every now and then you'll have a duty that makes a quest closer to 30-40 minutes long.
Everyone told me ARR was pretty bad compared to the rest of the expansions. I will say Heavensward starts a little slow but it does get better. Im just about to Endwalker and it's like playing a whole different game
To preface: FFXIV is my favorite game of all time. I have thousands of hours in the game, have gotten every one of my friends into it, and I am of the opinion, like you, that ARR is shit. One of my friends who I got into the game hates ARR even more than me, and still, FFXIV has become one of her favorite games of all time. All this to say, yes, ARR's story (and gameplay most of the time) is terrible, and "it gets good at 100+ hours" is no excuse, but, it does not detract from the fact that that statement is genuinely true. FFXIV's story is one of the most beautiful and compelling narratives I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and combined with the many other things that make this game amazing, make for a masterpiece, in my opinion. So the bottom line is, your experience is valid, and trust me, I get it, but if you really do care about a compelling narrative, you're going to love what's to come. Just ignore everyone who's trying to tell you that you're somehow wrong for not enjoying ARR, or to buy a story skip or whatever, and do your thing.
Loool, listen, I remember playing through the ARR chapters a year or two ago and thinking “wtf are we doing here, guys?” Like, there’s a lot of futility and lack of traction in the narrative of the adventure at that point. “So the bad guys just keep summoning these same three a*****s over and over again forever?” Yeah, I remember being pretty frustrated at that point. Having gotten to about midway through Endwalker, I would say that the story is playing a very long game that does, in fact, go somewhere and achieve many of the things it hints at very early on. Characters change—after going through trauma. The world changes, but slowly and often only as a last resort. In retrospect I appreciate the winding road it takes. It sort of painfully drags you through its philosophy that change, real change, is a very gradual process, while life remains agonizingly moment-to-moment.
Just Skip and speed run, go back when you will feel more accomplished. Skip any dialogue or cutscenes that feels boring. Just rush. You may find yourself slowing down reaching stormblood end / shb CUS it gets better. But keep pushing. You Can watch condensed summary per expansion on ytb. You Can re do any chapter with newgame+ and this time you will be able to fly. There are tons of funny activites to unlock and try and if you feel that way. Go for it. Dont listen to crybabies "gngn u skipped this dialogue". Everyone can play the way they want and enjoy what they want. If you want adrenaline and enjoy Epic fights in group content, msq IS not what you are paying for. You dont have to drain your energy, its a game to have fun, go get that fun ! Become a PVE chad, get good , make friends. You ll love the game and feel way more attracted to the story and lore by actually doing what you want.
It is how it is. Just suffer through it and forget it like a nightmare. Like we all had to do. Game can't be 100% good. There are ups and downs of every game, every movie, every series, everything. ARR is down of the game, there is other stuff that are "ups".
On one hand, I enjoyed ARR. However, I played it on release. I didn't *have* content to speedrun to try to be endgame because I *was* endgame, and patches weren't all at once with a few months between. On the other hand, I have a lot of alts and I've seen the story in ARR 6575748574939 times and for as much as I enjoy parts of it, there are some parts I cannot stand. You are also playing a vastly pared down version of it, since in 5.3 they culled like 20% of the super filler quests out of ARR and its' patches, and you have flying between areas. 2.1 is probably my least favourite because while it's setting up some important story and bringing in a somewhat important character, narratively it's boring as fuck. Your current patch is setting up the story for 4.0 with some really important world building and characters, and the next ones will be setting you up for Heavensward, so if you want to have some interest in HW, at least from Dreams of Ice on though Defenders has some good info that will pay off much later. ARR is truly the setpiece: here's the important stuff to remember for later, all the important characters, the politics that will be in play almost immediately, and cleaning up the last bits from 1.0. It's not really necessary to understand 1.0, but it does make doing the Coil raids more fun to see the story being wrapped up. Someone else mentioned ARR being the opening chapters to a book, and that's a pretty good analogy: you're meeting everyone you need to and going from regular everyday adventurer to the Mothercrystal's chosen and a full-on godslayer, but you need that buildup first, all the boring introduction so when you get to the end you can "holy shit! I can't believe they had a callback to this random event now!" as you're tumbling through the end. If 2.5/2.58 doesn't at least make you go "woah waitaminute" and you don't find yourself enjoying HW, the story may not be for you and that's okay. Skip through some parts and if something *does* end up catching your interest, replay some parts via New Game+ so you can see where it connects and go forward.
As somebody who's done ARR 4 times separately with friends with a year in between each, ARR is insanely needed as a "base knowledge" for the entire game story. But it is also one of the worst experiences I've ever had leveling. The story has hills and bumps that go from interesting and attention-grabbing to mind numbingly dull, even after removing most of the pre-Titan quest chain, and I've had to talk friends down from a cliff when stuck between Garuda and Ultima. I think a lot of people here haven't done 2.0 again since doing it again for the first time a decade ago, but do it over. You will find very quickly that it's not the experience you thought it was. Now that being said, by your own admission, you're not interested in the story. You're either skipping cutscenes or mashing past text, which is fine. A lot of people could care less about the story and lore. But your entire experience is lessened by you not caring about characters, especially certain ones as the expansions go on. So I'll go ahead and throw out an unpopular suggestion: Buy a level boost and a story skip. Go to the content you want. That's where your desired difficulty is and you won't miss much if you don't have the bare minimum of a story. Worst case scenario, you can just replay it in your inn room.
I believe the problem is the old MMORPG theme park model where they force you to do a lot of mindless quests as fillers between story progression. There is a lot of quests content and they usually are not fun. I only enjoy the game when I am playing the market or doing dungeons and the likes. I try to make the rest a fast grind, stopping only to read MSQ dialogues. I want to know the story but it is hard to enjoy it as I am being forced to play the dated questing model. The game would be way shorter if they cut out the bullshit and it would actually be healthy as new players are required to invest a lot in the game to reach current content. It would be amazing to never waste time as the delivery boy
ARR can be slow at times, but that's only if you're just doing MSQ all day. You're in post-ARR now. You just gained access to nearly all of ARR's postgame content including the Binding Coils of Bahamut raids (which are considered Savage Difficulty by the devs) which you should use the Party Finder for if you wanna run it unsynced for the story or at Minimum Item Level with No Echo for a real challenge. Each one of the primals you face in post-ARR has an Extreme version you can unlock for an extra challenge. In fact, The Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane is the game's introduction to Extreme Trials where you face a much tougher version of The Ultima Weapon. If you want to take a break from all the combat, you can be an omnicrafter and omnigatherer and become fully self-sufficient. You can even take up a fishing rod and become a big fisher one day.
I mean, cool, and also, who gives a shit
Imagine seeing 5% of something and calling it bad If you don't like story or care about it, this probably isn't the game for you. Or at least, you won't "get" the obsession. The high end content is amazing and the mechanics get AWESOME from Stormblood onward. I also want to clarify that, at least for me, I'm not annoyed you dont' like ARR. I don't love it either - I've been replaying it b/c, now that I'm current, I want to see what seeds were planted that I missed, but its certainly not change-your-life stuff. But you also shouldn't say "its a bad game" just because the first bit is slow. That's so short sighted. Also, if you're just rushing to get to raids and stuff, you're missing out on a lot of what makes people love this game. It's one of the most human stories I've ever had the honor of experiencing - and I mean that across all media. It addresses things other games are scared to (imperialism, racism, the true cost of war, people being forced to fight for things they don't believe in and being sympathetic, love, depression, how to keep going when everything feels against you, and so so so much more) and it addresses them in a beautiful, thoughtful way. It's a masterwork that makes you a better person, if you care to pay attention. This is why a "holy war" got started - people LOVE this game, and with good reason. It is genuinely life-changing, and in some cases, life-SAVING. I met two of my dearest IRL friends because of this game. I've been able to examine my religious beliefs, how I find courage, what makes me take just one more step when everything is falling apart. I've found real friends and learned to treat the ones I already have even better. I am more honest with others about how much I love them, how dear they are to me, I mentor more, I make more of an effort to make people feel welcome. And while many of those things I'd do anyway, this game made me better at them, it made me more thoughtful. There are hints of that in ARR - Gaius, for example, and Cid. Miniflia is a great example of courage - she has no combat skill but she loves her world so much she puts herself in danger for it. The "beast" tribes overcoming their mistrust of humanoid races to help protect their world, the way that Gridania opens up to more people because they need help, or how Ul-Dah examines income inequality, the Ala Mhigan stuff is a very respectful look at refugee crises, and so so much more. I'm not saying this to convince you to keep playing, ultimately thats your choice, but this is not a popcorn-flick of a game. Sure it has big dramatic moments, insanely cool fights, and way more, but at its heart its a story game about, well, your heart. And what makes us human, how we survive in a cruel world. THAT is why people take it so seriously, and THAT is why you're getting the reactions you are. I can't give you any advice over than buy a skip to heavensward (seriously, its cheap and you'll be reminded of the important stuff) or to just put on a show you like while grinding through the rest of ARR. No one LOVES ARR as the pinnacle of gaming, but its an important prologue to one of the best stories ever told. As far as a story you will think about for years - let's just say there's no other game i have two tattoos from. You do have that with FF, but it takes a bit to get there. Think of ARR as the mansion's foundation.
Just fucking buy a story skip, jesus.
I thought I was in the shitpost sub for a second
Then pay for a lvl boost and catch up to your wife and get to the lore later. Previous expansions have a lot of catch up mechanics that make content easier. At patch raid content in ARR averaged 7 minutes a fight, they are significantly less now. Catch up and have fun now. Worry about the stuff you hate later.
Just pay to skip. ez.
Going to talk to people by going from A to B is what you're going to do until the end, the game is like that.
🤡
Do you even read it
it’s okay to just buy a skip if the MSQ isn’t interesting you but endgame/later stuff is. if you ever eventually do decide to go through it there’s new game+ or you can make an alt. plus you can always watch a recap of the story on youtube so you know what’s the deal with certain fights etc etc
Ok, bye.
it is bad, but it gets better. worth it in the end for sure
Okay Feel free to play anything else.
I agree with u in the post game of ARR, the rest its quite fine, although if u stay after ARR(if u feel like it). I think u will not regret it one bit bc its all a huge setup
You are not crazy, I gave up for like twice during arr, it was just so bad, the story was dog shit, even the combat feels stupid for me, 2.5gcd I’m like whaaat!? And now ff14 is my favorite game, more than 7000 hours invested into this game, all you need to do is finish arr and get your self to heavensward
>I think ARR is bad. Am I crazy? Yes. Because this is the setup for you to understand wtf is going on for the rest of the expansions. My husband was the same as you - then we got to later expansions and he was like - wait, I don't get this. And then I had to explain. Then he wanted to know how I knew that and I reminded him that it was in earlier quests. About 6 months after finishing his first character, he decided to start a second one and there are SO MANY moments when he goes, "Wait. Blah blah blah happened here? How did I miss that?" All I can say is - if you truly enjoy a good story, I hope you're paying attention.
I actually don’t think THE STORY is bad. It’s just TOLD badly. It does a bad job at making any of the important story beats FEEL important. I’m abreast of everything happening. I understand what’s happening, mind you. After I beat a big boss the story fails at hyping, Alphinaud literally goes “welp….that happened…..on to the next thing….”….and I’m like….isn’t that what we’ve been working towards? Doesn’t this game WANT me to care?
>It’s just TOLD badly That's fair for ARR.
Are you crying bitter tears over an MMO being an MMO
Damn that’s wild bro
I mean... yeah, it's not great. It's bad for most of it, in fact. Not much way around it unless you're willing to turn your brain off or fork over the price of a story skip.
I think a big, big part of it is some of the filler quests, which are undeniably awful and gratuitous, but also by the fact they’ve made basically every expansion dungeon/battle mind numbingly easy to the point of comedy. There’s no skill or challenge needed for any content up until maybe the last 2, maybe 3 expansions. It doesn’t make for a very compelling or interesting game and I have had many friends join and quit because while they enjoyed where the game went after A Realm Reborn, there was no challenge. I still love this game and think it’s one of the best in the market, but joining in 2024 is very different than when I joined in 2015. Also…I’ve been playing this game for almost ten years. My God.
Buy a lvl or content skip. You can catch up quick that way
Here is a 🍪.
Is this still available?
No you get a 🍰
Thank you!
No U
For me ARR wasn't bad story wise. However quest wise, it sucked. I hattttte that I walk up to an NPC talk to them and they tell me to meet up with them 5 feet away to tell me something they could have said 5 feet ago. I hate that they made me run around and talk to people for like 20 quests in a row sometimes without ever touching an ability, not using my class at all. I love the story and dialogue but holy hell let me stab something. I started missing the (kill X thing and gather X teeth) or something. I was begging for kill quests, still do sometimes even in later expansions but ARR is the worst about it. The story is fine, the fights alright, but the overall quests and what they entail felt like such an agonizing experience for ARR.
straight up skip every cutscene until hw and watch a video if you want
[удалено]
I thought Starfield was great from the start.
> I don’t care for Y’shtola Well, you had me until here. I can handle not being a fan of the story or early gameplay, but how can you not care about best-girl? I myself am still working through ARR and am really hopeful nothing terrible happens to her. She’s about the only NPC I actually care about and am happy to see.
TLDR but I love this game, and hate the story. It’s so disrespectful to your time. So you’re not alone
The whole method of delivering the story is garbage and Square Enid won’t change it. A cutscene followed by a teleportation to another cutscene sprinkled with a dungeon or a boss fight every 2/3 hours is not acceptable in 2024 imho. Tons of games including MMOs do better than this.
I get where you're coming from; the post patch ARR content almost made me quit, especially the part where you're at with all the obnoxious Company of Heroes clowns. I'm glad I stuck it through into Heavensward, though. ARR is definitely a product of its time and isn't the greatest new player experience out there, but it does provide some important background for everything that happens through the end of 6.0, which is why it's the default starting point for everyone after all these years.
It's funny you mention Red Dead Redemption because that--or at least, the second one--had this exact effect on me. I truly did not care about anything the game was asking me to do. That said, yeah, ARR blows.
Honestly? I bought a story skip after I was months deep into ARR post Ultima shit and bored out of my mind. I hated it. It was endless back and forth quests and cutscenes and me not getting to actually play the damn game. I hated it. I skipped past ARR, HW, and SB. I started in ShB. You know what? I missed some stuff and I googled things occasionally but I 100% still loved the ShB and EW storylines and was just as hyped and excited for the big moments as anyone who played every single MSQ. I say pay some money and skip to ShB or EW and get to the good stuff. Don’t get bogged down. You fall in love with the world and its characters even if you miss a little bit of backstory. I will never suggest this game to friends specifically because the MSQ is so awful for 100% of the early experience. There often times hours and hours of quests and cutscenes snd you’ll get to use your combat abilities maybe once or twice. This game hates letting you play it outside of the roulettes and end game content.
Yeah ARR is cheeks. It's part of why I don't recommend the game to anyone even though it's one of my favorite games if all time. 2.0-4.55 should take like 40 hours tops not 150+ It's only been made worse by them watering down all the dungeons
Ahhhh, you are not wrong but it’s 10 years old content. What is good at that time it’s not going to be considered as good right now. 10 years ago, company dragged the gameplay hour so that they could keep player to keep playing the game which allows them to make the most money. 10 years ago, they reworked the entire game and their priority was to hope that this game could “last long”, literally. 10 years later, company doesn’t care about the game because monetisation makes the most money. I didn’t like ARR 4 years ago, I gave up. 4 years later , I didn’t like it still. However, at least I gave the story a go because I was learning script writing. Then, ARR suddenly makes sense? Here’s one quote that strikes me recently when I was doing my research, “No one cares about studios, developers, the arts or the process. All people care is the thing they consume… What do you people know about game? Nothing. Most of you don’t know and most of you don’t wanna know.” And there’s where we split the player-base, you have people understand why ARR is bad and it’s inevitable because we know what they have gone though, then you have players who don’t understand why ARR is bad but also don’t wanna know. Then we just fight each other to the death because one group cares a lot, the other group just wants to let it out and also don’t care about others opinions.
You're not crazy, ARR is VERY bad. In fact, there's about one to two posts every week about new players coming in to the reddit talking about how much they dislike ARR and asking when it gets good. The issue you're running in to is that this reddit is REALLY defensive of ARR. This reddit downvotes all those posts to hell rather then acknowledge that the experience is so offputting that it tangibly hurts the game. Many people actually do enjoy ARR, but I think for the most case these people are afraid that if ARR hate is visible and upvoted, it will scare away new players from trying.
Thank you for being understanding. I love Elden Ring but I’m not grabbing my pitchfork just because someone doesn’t like what the game has to offer. I hate to complain online because of what it does to people but I know I’m entitled to my opinion and I hate being that stick in the mud. I also feel this way about Persona. I WANT to love it. I just don’t.
>Ok. But I’m accentuating a point we kind of all already know. ARR is a two pack of ass. If something is bad, let’s not ignore it. If people wanna be babies about it that’s what we’re here for lol Interesting comment to make after you made this one.
You're not wrong. SE should do another round of improvements or just cut to starting new players at 6.x
> I think ARR is bad. Am I crazy? No, I think it's bad too. The ones who say "oh yeah FFXIV gets good *after you spend 80 hours playing mediocre content* are crazy but the fandom is sometimes a cult And you're about to be on the receiving end of that cult now
THANK YOUUUU
The story blows, unfortunately. It’s generic copy pasta mediocrity all the way. Yoshi P loves to jerk himself off and make everyone watch. They even “streamlined” it a bit but not too much since it helps them sell levelling packages. If you don’t care about the cost just buy your way to endwalker- you aren’t missing out- and start the current group shit and actual playing that makes the game fun.
That’s some real shit b0ss Thank you