On the trail of the Enterprise, knowing dang well there’s going to be a dungeon at the end of it and dreading every step of it but getting invested in the story. (It’s Elvish Skyrim! I love it here!)
Aaaand then it grinds to an absolute halt by making me do busywork quests. It might be reasonable given the story, but one maddening thing about ARR is the absolute nonsense…“teasing” is the best word I can think of that’s board appropriate. Like it hypes you up, hypes you up, hypes you up…okay good now go do these little arbitrary quests.
It’s starting to go from “mildly annoying” to “actively wasting my time”. And a game does not want to go into the latter category.
I deliberately avoided everything involved with the FanFest because I have no idea what would and would not be considered a spoiler. I know of the Reaper Class and Male Bun-Buns.
To be fair, this portion of the MSQ is a little more important, although you won't know it quite yet. It's not strictly busywork and will introduce a few things that lead into some of the side dungeons if you're into lore at all. From a MSQ perspective it seems like it's just more of the Titan gathering BS, but I think you'll like it when you have time to go back explore some of the optional side content related to it, especially the Pharos Sirius dungeon. It also introduced just how important different types of crystals are, which uhhhh you're gonna need to remember that.
Also the Trial you’re going to is gonna be fun. Probably easier for you than Titan was, but the payoff is so good and is basically the sign you’re heading full steam into the end stretch of ARR.
TBH, if I have to pay money to skip the bulk of the game (and I’m not big into end game in ANY MMO, frankly) because it bores me to tears, then that game is just not for me.
Also my biggest gripe of FFXIV’s otherwise great story is the absolute square tonnage of dog-doo level “filler” quests it has you do. People complain about WoW’s dull generic quests. FFXIV has a staggering amount of “talk to guy A, now talk to guy B, now go back to A.” It’s bad enough when they are roughly in the same zone but when you have to start city-state hopping it gets really tedious.
Spoiler free example. Guy A wants you to find a thief. Says go talk to guy B for more info. Guy B is in another zone. Travel. Guy B has 4 paragraphs of dialogue that literally equates to “Ask guy A if he has a better idea, cuz I dunno.” So back to guy A. It really irked me.
ARR is definitely a slog, though it is a bit better now. Skipping all the cutscenes on my alt, it took me about 4.5 days to finish everything, with each expack taking about a day of playtime. If you’re really reading and watching everything, each expack is roughly a 40-hour jRPG.
Some people aren’t into that. It’s cool. FFXIV is a FF game first and an MMO second, and that’s not for everyone. But, it does a lot of cool subtle things you don’t realize until in hindsight. They are very good about bringing back concepts and people you met three expacks ago and are suddenly relevant in big ways.
I think my favorite thing, though, is how invested it makes you feel in your own character. Like, yeah it’s slow at first. But, what you don’t realize until a couple expacks later is that you–YOUR character–was in almost every cutscene, every moment in the game. All those little moments add up to a point where it can sometimes be hard to even change your glamour just because you’ve been subconsciously following your own little WoL along through all of these hours without realizing it. Then those big moments hit and you go “Yes! That’s me and my friends!” in a way I don’t really feel with a lot of other games where you make your own char these days.
Okay, like… not to be snarky but you also don’t have to play it if you’re really not enjoying yourself. Most would agree it gets much better with the transition into Heavensward but if it’s causing you this much grief, it’s okay to put it down.
I honestly don’t think ARR is any more of a slog than, say, vanilla WoW. I don’t understand how… for some it’s a problem that there’s a lot of “Go talk to A, then B, then C” fluff but it’s no more tedious than the millions of “Go kill X of Y, go collect N of Z” quests WoW gives us. One is no worse than the other, it’s just a difference of the type of tedium and most MMOs are going to have this issue. It’s the nature of the beast.
I admittedly did buy a skip to Heavensward but I can’t even rightly say it was that necessary and knowing how many story beats I missed makes me regret doing so.
I mean, I personally feel the same way. Fetch quests are basically MMO staples at this point. I think the divide is just that one is more “active” since you’re grinding mobs whereas FF is more story-based so it feels “passive” like you didn’t do anything. But, well, I experienced “Go find Makrik’s wife” on enough alts to know there’s not that much difference in terms of actual time spent.
I like the talking stuff since it introduces characters and makes the world feel alive with lots of small, mundane moments. But I can definitely see why it’s not for everyone. It’s also why i don’t usually advocate story skips to HW, even if ARR is a bit slow. The background work the game is doing in establishing things pays off really well.
Excited for Vanndrel's first experience of seeing "Several cutscenes will play in sequence..."
That’s kind of the problem. I’ve put in 42 hours so far and there’s a lot about the game I actually really do love. The story is actually really fascinating and Coerthas actually has my full attention in design terms. I like the dynamic and what’s going on. It’s simply just as I’m getting fully invested…the game pulls back.
My aggravation isn’t so much the game isn’t fun, it’s that the game isn’t pacing itself well.
Hopefully I make it that far. Tanoke’s not wrong in their assessment, and RPGs in general (and MMOs in particular) haven’t been my preferred genre of video games in a hot minute.
Well, if you were actively disliking the game, I’d say yeah don’t play it. If it’s just a rough start, I can say the pacing and whatnot are going to get better. I liken it to a movie or a book; if I stopped watching certain movies because of the first ten minutes, I would have missed out on a lot of things I genuinely ended up loving (Star Trek TNG season 1 comes to mind). But, well, that’s dependent on actually like story games.
If it helps with the decision, the quests your on right now are level 40-ish, so you are essentially in the final stretch of ARR right now. You’ll have post-expansion quests that can still be kind of boring but they have been cleaned up with a lot of the extraneous stuff taken out so I found it a lot better going through it recently.
Just read a small synopsis on the dungeon I’m going to have to run at the end of this.
Now when it says “lacks AoE indicator” how dangerous is this from a mechanics standpoint? Because I remember the last Dragon boss and how that didn’t go well for me.
Personally, it’s because in old vanilla WoW (not the bastardized Classic redux), many of those fetch and kill quests could be quite challenging since a pack of mobs could steamroll you back in ye olden days. One wrong pull and you’re done…OR you’re good enough to make it out alive, barely. A lot of us made a mini-game out of seeing how fast/how many mobs we could take at once, or hunting elite mobs–which was a challenge in its own right. Mind you, this was -early- days (2004-2006) so there weren’t tons of guides or addons. There were some, but you had to really dig for them. and most of us just didn’t, since none of my old crew were in a hardcore raiding guild (though we did love 45 min Baron runs and 10 man Scholo before it got nerfed)
In FFXIV, there’s absolutely zero challenge in the overworld stuff and the story isn’t particularly great (my opinion) either. At least not enough to make me want to keep paying money to sit through endless cut scenes while my silent protagonist (I hate that) just stands there like a lump and maybe nods once in a while.
Now, granted, I don’t play WoW at all these days (skipped most of MOP, all of WOD, came back for Legion, bailed early on both BFA and SL) because it’s become a bit too much like what I didn’t like in FFXIV: too linear, silent protagonist while other NPCs take over the story, overworld mobs faceroll boringly easy.
It’s just a different strokes for different folks. I really wanted to like FFXIV because I do sometimes like story-heavy MMOs and games (SWTOR had Imperial Agent, which was a heck of a fun story, and I love games like RDR2 or Witcher 3 for their good writing)… but the pacing has to be done well (I got to 56 on MNK in FFXIV before I just gave up because the story seemed to move so slowly I just lost interest), I loathe a silent protagonist, and slap some really easy PVE on top of that? I just can’t. I want to, but it’s just not going to happen no matter how hard I try to like it.
So the thing is. Heavensward (and the preceding quests) is going to take you by the throat and punch you in the face over. And over. And over.
I cannot remember the last time any game I’ve played, especially an MMO, gripped me so thoroughly and kept me emotionally invested for so long and so intensely. When characters survived, succeeded, it was thrilling. When they died, it HURT. It didn’t just make the ARR slog absolutely worth it–it made me regret having skipped the latter half of the 1-50 MSQ.
And people tell me Shadowbringers is even better??? And I’m like oh god am I ready for that???
Oh, yeah, the first boss is kind of a pain. Big damage frontal cone. A lot of it will be on your party members to avoid, not you. You might wipe once or twice. Just keep him faced away as best as possible, but he likes to wander off and do a conal at a random target, so it’s really just a matter of staying behind him as best as possible at all times.
I dunno how it is for tanks, though. Just pop those mitigations iirc. Most of his cones he doesn’t target anything specifically so you’ll notice when he’s not facing you anymore pretty immediately.
Square does a fairly impressive job of actually building the silent protagonist into a character in their own right. It’s kind of crazy how much personality you end up seeing in your own character. That, and the silent protagonist angle feeds into the mythos of the Warrior of Light as some legendary figure as well.
Heavensward Example.
Summary
I think one of my favorite details in this game so far was during the dinner with sir Aymeric in the 3.X content. During the meal, Aymeric reaches for his wine glass, and the Warrior of Light has an actual moment of anxiety watching that, and it makes it clear that the poisoning of the Sultana really scarred your character on a psychological level.
Shadowbringers Example.
Summary
Something I also found interesting was when you learn the Crystal Exarch is from the future of the Source. The various flashbacks regarding the tales and feats of the Warrior of Light give a certain gravity to the accomplishments of your character on a greater scale to the world’s history. The idea that the mere memory of you inspired some people to rise above when the world was plunging into chaos was poetry.
I remain forever regretful that SWTOR is an MMO. Could you imagine it as an actual Single Player experience? Eight Unique storylines, fully voiced with unique companions?