A useful tip: If you accidently skip a dialogue box (or the dialogue goes in one ear, out the other) OPEN THE CHAT and go to the "Event" tab (assuming it's the default settings) and you can see all the spoken dialogue from the NPCs. Saved my bacon a few times.
you can also re-hide the chat box by right clicking any of the tabs then hitting hide **beware though, this click will advance the cutscene by one line** and if you want to hide the cursor in a cutscene, just double tap escape to open and close the skip cutscene box or enable then disable text auto advance (press space bar then the confirm keybind 2x) or just press the confirm keybind (this also advances the conversation 1 line)
Dear Catboy, As someone allergic to MMOs I really appreciate your take on this, Jo. I briefly tried FFXIV with some friends and the social aspect is what appealed to me but _everyone_ I know adores the narrative, at least to some extent. Still don't think the typical MMO combat/pacing/structure is for me but maybe one day I'll have to set aside a couple dozen hours and fall down an explainer rabbit hole. Also thanks for the lil' shoutout haha. Yours, Bee Boy
Even by MMO standards, FF14 starts out INCREDIBLY slow-paced and, in my personal opinion, boring. There are absolutely MMOs with far more interesting combat systems.
Hey, not every game is for everyone, and as much as I'd enjoy the hell out of "A Good Enough Summary" for this game, if it's not your jam, don't jam it! Love your work, Barry, keep rocking it out.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for talking about how boring the actual gameplay is within the MSQ. I felt like I was genuinely being gaslit by the community when I would complain and just flat out be told I was wrong for feeling that way.
Yeah for SURE felt that while going through shadowbringers. It was starting to piss me off lol. Like, I’ve slain gods, felled dragons, liberated countries and weakened an empire and I’m somehow still doing FETCH QUESTS!? I’m an international hero!! So why am I literally delivering SANDWICHES in some small msq quests or aetherite quests? 😂
I've been told how the story gets so much better after ARR. When I finally get there, 60 hours in the game, I discover the new realm and MSQ. Nice. Then I get out of the city after the initial introduction. Literally the first task I get is to speak to some random dudes in watch towers to give the reports back to the quest giver. My mental state broke instantly. I quit and uninstalled the game. I couldnt bear to keep doing those stupid quest one more second, because I was assured after ARR, its all but a sweet cake. Point A point B go back to A. Travel to C, speak to randoms, Go back to A... Who in its right state of mind can tolerate this for dozens and dozens of hours ? A shame. Cause I got invested in the story. But GOD, the gameplay loop and progression is HORRIBLE. And the combat is not engaging one bit. I've been thinking of going back to FFIV. But this experience paired with the fact I have to pay a month of subscription to even try the game again... Its like a MASSIVE warning for me. Anyway, the community is as toxic as it can get with anyone having critics toward the game. Imagine being so positive you become exactly what you despite. There's an utopia gone wrong kind of vibe in FF community.
@@mimmim13aiv Damn, and here I thought I was angry about it as just a scrub. I think the part where he talks about the mindset change is going to be key for me, and probably for you as well. It seems we have no choice but to either not play, play miserably (like idiots) or learn to accept that despite all of the greatness the plot itself thrusts upon you and praise it heaps, you're still always gonna be the world's most beloved part time errand boy/girl too. Like a former postal worker who can't escape his roots even upon somehow making it big as a multimillion dollar CEO somewhere but still insisting to do coffee runs and carry paperwork for his subordinates cause he just can't stop delivering shit and everyone knows it so they keep asking him to.
@@Taima I know this is a bit late but his advice about changing your mindset really helps, doing all this random bullshit does explain how people are so willing to help us halfway through or at the end of the msq, Haurchefant is a great example. Anytime I felt like I was getting bored of the msq, I would switch into doing something else like levelling up other jobs or just doing other side quests.
@@crapcase3985true! I often go and do things like beast tribe, level grinding, even just taking a quick break to eat a snack and watch a video. Or I’ll do roulette and Wonderous tails
I have a friend who started FFXIV a few months ago and he always lets me know when he unlocks a dungeon or trial so that we can run it together as he feels more comfortable when doing group content with someone he knows. One time afterwards he thanked me for always getting on to run stuff with him and I said, "I'm going to let you in on a little secret: veteran FFXIV player *love* watching/listening to new players go through the MSQ because (in my experience) we want to be able to play through the story for the first time again and living vicariously through new players is the closest we can get." He said he felt used XD 6/2022 Update: He just reached Endwalker and got someone to cover his shift at work to play it all day XD
I hope you all enjoy this video as it has been a year in the making - not constant work mind you, more on-and-off over the time its been in production, but a long time coming regardless I'm happy to have these thoughts that have been nagging at my mind for so long to finally be out there it's a big loveletter to the game and my own closure to these complex feelings I've had about the game for so long
I really liked this video. I strongly related to a lot of your experience with this game. After trying FFXIV several times over several years, I recently got hooked when I started treating the MSQ as an old school single-player RPG that just happens to have other people playing it too. That might sound kind of dumb, but it has made all the difference for me. Instead of trying to rush through the main quest line and being mostly apathetic about it, now I’m actually engaged and interested. I’m no longer in a hurry to get to “the good part” because, like you said, it’s about the journey. There is some pretty cool stuff along the way, if you’re open to it - and I agree that the Hildebrand quests are definitely some of the best stuff.
I made my journey through the MSQ so much better by practicing my Voice acting. I would try and give any random NPC voices and it was pretty fun and also helped me pay attention to what was happening.
@@FNigslol he's just having fun with a friend man, literally no harm done, not even a cringey video to stain the internet with. also great voice actors are a key feature of modern gaming and series/movies, so weird thing to take issue with someone doing it for fun you came in out of nowhere and accidentally outed yourself as being insecure, so i hope you get past whatever's bothering you because shittier people could give you a harder time for doing things like this
"Yes this is a real thing, this is happening now, I like this it just makes me happy." I could hear him blushing at the end and Jo. I have not giggled so hard EVER! You are adorable and I can't Wait to see more content.
This video is the main reason I now enjoy FFXIV. I had much of the same gripes at first but I also now enjoy the game immensely for much of the same reasons. Thank you for making this!
I love the game, and the story, but the main story quests do kinda suck a lot of the time gameplay wise. Especially for me since I personally enjoy crafting gathering more than combat, but all my progress is level locked behind the MSQ. So I have to do it, I enjoy the story, but gameplay wise it's me having to take a break from what I wanna do right now to walk back and forth between NPCs for like 30 min, then maybe fight a mob or two, or do a dungeon. The boss fights I love though, not as a big a fan of the dungeons, but they're not bad either. I just get unlucky and always have to do them when I wanna be doing something else.
The "older players love watching newbies go through the story" thing is very, VERY true with me. I've been actively seeking out newbies to watch on Twitch (whether they be the higher profile guys like Preach and Pyromancer and Nobbel or smaller streamers like Giltspire who streams it every Wednesday evening), and reaction videos on UA-cam purely because I've enjoyed seeing other people experience the story. I still enjoy the game and have a BUTTLOAD of things to do (especially since I'm juggling two characters on two DC's) but that has been a fun thing to do on the side while I play.
I quest alone - I recently established as solo-person FC - and when I see another sprouts in area and they're fighting mobs, I'll standby and I'll chip in the fight if they're struggling. Or doing FATE with them even if I have to level-sync down. It's very satisfying, and at the end of that, with customary /bow and what-not.
Too true. Honestly, one of my favorite things to see people react to the first time is The Burn (Savage) in Stormblood. You know the one I'm talking about.
@@KelvinYong77 I do that at times as well simply because of that one person who stayed with me really early in the game when I was leveling the healer since they allowed me to hit the enemy once before one shotting it. It was a boring experience but I was quite happy due to the nice gesture.
Every time I see a JoCat video it just shows how he truely is the most headpattable (Is that a word? Well now it is) youtuber there is. He is like a cotton candy cloud, wrapped in chocolate. A walking cinamon roll of a character that you want to hug. I need to punch a wall to feel manly again.
The most common question I’ve found myself asking more experienced players during the MSQ is “so when’s the next dungeon?” and I think you explained why that is very well
It’s called immaturity. One day if you’re lucky, you’ll learn to stop and smell the roses. To enjoy a game in full, and appreciate all of the work and care that goes into the minor details in between the larger set pieces. Stay in school
@@austins.2495 Or maybe I've stopped to smell the roses 200 times already and I just want to actually play the game? I get its a story driven MMO and there's 10 years + of content to catch up on. I totally get it. But at the end of the day, I did buy a game. The percentage of gameplay to story is way off to be enjoyable. I can't even play with friends until I hit a dungeon because even though we're sitting in a discord call, everyones quiet focusing on the story until they actually have a quest that requires you to play the game. For every 2 hours of story, there's about 30 minutes of actual gameplay. That's a terrible mix and the reason why a lot of new players burnout.
Jo knows how I feel about FF14. I had many of the same gripes. And since I started playing again this year I wanted to come at it with a better head and with Jo's help, I have been doing a lot better. And I am glad you made this video Jo, as I know you have been working on it for a long time. Thank you for sparking some love for it again.
Oh, right. I was coming into this game as someone entirely new to MMOs (basically didn't even know what they _were,_ and so certainly didn't have any genre biases going in), and as someone who liked/likes reading and was (and still is) very much into slow buildup-to-payoff arcs and extensive worldbuilding, no wonder I took to it so readily.
I wasn't exactly NEW to MMOs, but it was the first time I'd ever payed for one. My sister-in-law INSISTED I'd love it and, unfortunately, I dragged my heels on joining for a few years. It was only when she went and bought me ARR (and then proceeded to buy HW and StB for me while I was still in my first week of ARR) that I actually played. It was a case of, "...well, I have this game, and a month's sub, so I should probably play it..." and I did. And I loved it. I'm an avid reader and slow build-up/pay-off is INTERESTING to me. I love how everything, EVERYTHING wound up mattering in the end.
I love reading the text so much I check on NPCs that aren't the main quest goal just for more flavor. Sometimes they be like "uh what're you talking to me for?"
My primary form of entertainment is novels and I was skipping 90% of the text and nothing in the game could grasp my attention at all. Almost every character really rubbed me the wrong way. Then one day I was bored and changed the language to Japanese, I wanted to see if there was any nuance being lost in translation. And what do you know, the characters are *completely* different. I'm not sure who is in charge of the localisation but jesus christ they did a bang up job of it. Made near bloody everyone a walking poster for angst, conceit and passive aggressive twatism for seemingly no reason at all. Have not skipped a single line since swapping over, it's a whole different cast with so many little things. There's still a bunch of Japanese tropes I could have done without but at least they are what they are and aren't being painted over with the rooster strutting that was the entire English localisation
Hearing the passion as he's talking about this game's story, and that he had the same type of gripes that I do for the MSQ has actually given me the drive to at the very least watch a story recap video, (the one i've got pulled up is almost 4 hours long so hopefully it's good enough to hook me) if not go back and do NG+. So, thank you Jo, for potentially causing me to sink even *more* hours into this game than I already have lmao
I cannot agree more with the 'paying attention' part. Literally they'll pull out a detail that'll just make you jump out of your seat once you recognize it and it's such a rewarding feeling. This MSQ is definitely worth all the the slow burn for me. Once you have the correct mindset playing it's well worth it. Of course just like Jo said, you can play this game in a multitude of ways, this game stands out so well on it's own with the MSQ or the gameplay alone. Someone show Quinn this video.
do you have any great examples of the story pulling out a detail in such a way that made you jump out of your seat? My problem with the MSQ is that having spent the last 6 months doing very little else (currently at patch 5.4) I can't tell if I've mentally checked out because of burn out or because it stopped hooking me. My excitement peaked at Heavensward and didn't return to HW levels until the 5.0 and 5.3 climaxes.
31:58 i feel like that's actually one of the biggest issues in the game that you touched upon earlier. So much of the game is effectively single player other than dungeons and trials. I really wish more of the game was co-op, such as being able to go into instanced story battles together, duty support dungeons together so you can take your time to read lore stuff, being able to team up to finish quests together. Etc etc. Like you said a lot of it will be your friend having to do the quests alone while you wait on the sideline until they reach the next dungeon or trial, then rinse and repeat. I know it's a old video but I thought to give it a watch because my partner quit on one of those post ARR errand quests where Minfilia mentions that they are wasting your time with errands in the text box. Made them think "I really am wasting my time aren't I?" And quit. Trying to get them to get back for the free login event and got the reply "Nice try squenix, you can't trick me into wasting more time on pointless errand quests tho" which really sucks.
Boy does it. Heck I'm only in the free trial(I started playing for real after the free trial got extended to include all of Heavensward)but I quit and started fresh cause my reason was real life related and a(metaphorical) seed of doubt got planted in my mindset but thanks to my friends I deleted my character in Diablos cause it reminded me of what happened irl and started fresh in Faerie where they all were and I actually felt motivated to play it again and I'm gonna be looking into getting a subscription later on when I'm able.
@@FightOstinFight I admire your persistence, but honestly, if you're just not feeling the story and/or combat, that's totally ok. I love this game with my whole heart, it's my favorite of all time, but I will readily admit that the beginning is rough. I hate when people say, "It gets good once you get to 2.4/2.5, then way better in Heavensward!" Not a good way to sell the game or keep struggling newer players interested. At least you can say that you gave it a shot! Don't make yourself miserable; move on to other games.
I will say: the bit about "take your time with the msq" is so very important. I have been playing the game for roughly 6 months now, and I'm still in the post-patch content for stormblood. I have often taken week or even month-long breaks from doing any msq content. Enjoy it at your own pace, it will make things so much better. This game is a marathon, not a sprint.
I finished Shadowbringer only a couple weeks after Endwalker released but have ignored the new expansion in favour of lvling professions and checking out old raids. The Ruby Weapon quest (extreme trial series ShB) and onward story must be some of the best I've played in the game so far.
@@k.vn.k Except the entire video is talking about how it took JoCat 300 hours to enjoy FF14. That isn't made right. Hell, if I don't enjoy a game in the first 3 hours, I refund it or stop playing it, because if something can't grab me in the same time it takes me to watch a movie, it's doing something wrong.
Fun fact: Stockholm syndrome is not an actual thing and originated from a hostage situation in (who woulda guessed) Stockholm. The hostages were not willing to testify against their captors in court, which led to the police psychologist Nils Bejerot to coin the term. In actuality the reason was more probable to have been the polices major incompetence as well as the hostage takers being nice to the hostages, one of the hostages literally said afterwards that their captors had been more competent than the police. That‘s not a very good look for the police though, so they made a psychologist explain why this happened without blaming the polices incompetence. The more you know
Same Secret world was a Game I wanted to Love. I bought the original day 1 way back when it first came out cause the concept sounded awesome. But the gameplay was so bad, I couldn't get past Area 2 cause even with all the 'Top Gear' I could get from the raid, bosses, and quests, the enemies were just too powerful and took too long to beat. And Area 3, was the same. Never made it to Area 4, ever, in all my years of player. And by 'Area', I do mean 'AREA', not as in, the 4th arch or 4th chapter, I mean in the very beginning area at the start of the game, going to the 'Exist' to the next zone on the same island. I only ever made it to Zone 4 Max, out of playing the game on and off over the years. Which is sad, cause I WANT to experience the game and the Lore and quests. But holy shit the Combat and 'MMO Mechanics' is too fucking hard to enjoy. It's like trying to Solo a Raid in Wow, but it's just the the basic 'normal map' and not even the raid yet.
That's actually a really great comparison (and sad that it's so apt, too). The Secret World had SUCH a great story, but even reincarnated as Secret World Legends, you had to fight against the MMO mechanics to get to the juicy story nuggets. And sometimes, that fight was just too much. 🙁 I hope you have better fortunes in FFXIV!
This is literally exactly what happened to me. Started out loving the crafting and other progression, but started getting really bogged down trying to get through MSQ to unlock things. Near the end of ARR I just kinda gave up and stopped playing. Halfway through watching this video I started the game up again and I'm gonna try to follow the advice here... hopefully it works, because I really think I could love this game and its community if I could just get into the groove. So ... I think I gotta go practice my imperial salute or something? Wish me luck.
As someone who has tried to play ffxiv since it first came out on PS3 , December just gone me and a mate said "screw it we will commit till we enjoy it". ARR does suck but it sets up so much, just finishing heavensward it's not a game changer but all the other things you can do outside the msq while making your way through it is a blast. By time I got my character to level 50 , which I had done while I still had like 30 quests left in ARR I was hooked. Give it time, really commit if you can and you'll eventually see why it's so recommended
Totally with you. The MSQ made me quit. I simply couldn't bear being forced to watch Mary Sues talk to each other while *my* character nodded and nodded and nodded and agreed to do stuff I didn't want to do.
@@zomgl2pnoobffs Hearing the word Mary Sue used to describe characters in FF14 makes me want to punch you, but I understand you are still in the ignorance of ARR, so I shall refrain.
Playing through ARR again recently I realized the MSQ is like a skeleton of just the basic plot. I found a ton of cool stuff by talking to the optional NPC's in the Waking Sands between quests. Things you wouldn't ever expect like an origin story for Arenvald's silver armor lol. Those have been filling out the story and making it feel much less like a saturday morning cartoon where the primal of the week gets slain by the one person immune to them.
I appreciate the video, I'm 60 hours into MSQ as a new player and its awful, I hate the game a lot right now. "It gets better" has been the most dismissive and crushing thing to hear, the early game content is not good at all and its an absolute job to get through it. Charging me over half the cost of Endwalker to skip is a maliciously predatory practice and they know exactly what they're doing. I'm struggling to even open the game to finish Heavensward atm. Giant maps with no players and no content, just auto-running from point A to point B on a slow bird all alone. Compelling stuff..
This just goes to show that, when you recommend the game, you don't have to tell the person anything about the game being good at X amount of hours or when you reach a certain point. All you have to do, is let the person know that the game is STORY heavy, and have REALLY BIG EMPHASIS in story so paying attention to it is crucial. It's an RPG first (JRPG to be exact), MMO second. If its it doesn't tickle their kinks after trying it out, they can put down the game and try other ones as the game won't go away anytime soon. I had a friend who was into FPS and MOBAs and has no care about the lore in the games he played because he's just not interested in it. He never played JRPGs or Western RPGs. He was my room mate, he saw me play this game from hours to end (I have 700+ days total playtime, YES I WAS THIS ADDICTED TO THE GAME) and he was curious as to why I was having so much fun in the game while he doesn't find the same amount of fun anymore in MOBAs and FPS games. He tried the game with me and he was starting to burn out around the post ARR patch that involves the Sahagin before the big fight and the last straw were the Sylphs *(I still remember the questlines that were removed involving these beast tribes because I played them and they are really tedious so I understand why it was removed even though it provides more lore context why we need to do what we need to do or why the thing happened)*. I never pushed him to slog thru and just told him to take it easy, slow or put the game down if he starts getting frustrated. Part of it is him trying to understand why the game is so fun to me, and similar to you, he feels like he is missing out. So he took a 4 month break, went back to the old games he played and then one day he asked me if I can play with him, this time I said, "Ok, if were gonna do this, then let's go all the way. I'll create an alt and I'll start over and catch up to you" To which he replied, "No, I'll delete my character, it didn't have anything special in it anyway and we'll start together." Then I started to tell him to take the game slow, read the main quests because me and the game is not going anywhere. Needless to say, he followed my advise. 2 years later, he is now a Triple Legend (which is something I didn't accomplish since I am not a hardcore raider but an omnicrafter) and fell so in love with the game that he keeps recommending it to some of his friends whenever he is asked of games he would want to recommend and is excited play with them so that he can see their reactions to certain points of the quests. He was even the one that started to convince me to get into Savage Raids because he was having so much fun. Played Endwalker together and he kept messaging me that this game is something he really treasures and thanked my patience to go thru the entire game again with him even though I already have a max level character way back in Heavensward. Also, additional note after getting hooked in this game, whenever he wants to take a break from the game, he tries out any RPG he can find, even the RPGs in the PS1 and SNES era, as he fell down the rabbit hole that is RPGs. He loves Witcher, Legend of Zelda and FFIV (to him it was the best FF game next to FFXIV) because it resonated with him having a brother that felt distant, yet always there when he needed him most. So whenever the topic of him being an RPG nut, from being an FPS and MOBA fiend, I always get the blame. KEKW P.S. English is my second language so I hope I did not misspoke. LUL
Conversely, I fell in love with FF14 almost instantly, and feel immense disappointment in the fact I can't afford a subscription. But maybe there's something in this video that can help me enjoy FF14 even more than I already do, so we'll see what I think after I watch the video. Edit: I might play FF14 again, despite not being able to progress anymore.
This is absolutely an excuse to try out more of what the game has to offer, even in the free trial. I have some friends who embarked on the craft/gather everything themselves route, who we brought along to do the high end trials/raids of ARR with, heck even one who became a collect-aholic when he realized his old obsession: FF8's card game Triple Triad, was basically all here too. Caveat being that it helps to have some friends one linkshell call away, but there's still plenty of other optional non-MSQ content to mess around with.
My main annoyance was that people with linkpearls still needed you to go to them and talk to them in person only to send you away again. Or instead of using their linkpearl to talk to another person with a linkpearl they send you...
They explain that, linkpearls can be intercepted, so the important secret stuff need to be said in person. Heck, your linkpearl is hacked during Praetorium so that red power ranger can have a discussion with his former crush! That's why they use the linkpearl mostly to tell you to go to HQ so that they can relay to you information.
@@NibelungJ Still feels like a retroactive justfication for a real problem with their game design. Like not putting a teleporter crystal in Vesper Bay.
@@Healermain15 It's not retroactive, as I said, your linkpearl DO get hacked at some point in the 2.0 MSQ, justifying the need of communicate sensitive things in person.
The minifilia joke about not being a character was hilarious. Personally, I was totally desensitized to doing time wasting quests, so I had no issue with the slow burn of the MSQ, but I definitely understand whenever one of my friends plays and they complain bitterly about all the parts of the MSQ that waste time.
I've been primed to try this game out thanks to you. Now that I'm actually playing it, I'm having an absolute blast. I think that, having watched the video in the past has massively influenced me to actually enjoy the early game. I'm sitting at level 35 right now and its a lot of fun to just do stuff at my own pace. And yes, I level up every crafting and gathering job that is not fisher while also just doing my dragoon/archer stuff on the side. I've started the game alongside friends. They are not enjoying their time with the story at all, to the point where I'm like: Where have I heard this before? TLDR; forwarded this video to them and I'ma gonna re listen to this as well again now. Thanks for this one chief.
I was invested since ARR. Helped me through quarantine at thr start of pandemic. Did take a break at lqte heavensward since most of my friends were also taking a break and resumed last year. Ff14 helped me through depression actually and it is one on the top games for me.
Can I just say that I LOVE how heartily you recommended Hildibrand content without giving potential players even the smallest hint about what they're getting in for. I mean that sincerely, I think it's brilliant. I think you can enjoy it TONS knowing what it is, but oh god, going in blind? You are just NOT expecting the game to take that kind of turn. Great video! Even as someone who already loves it, and didn't have the same problems. I'll definitely recommend this video to people trying to get into the game if they have these issues.
I personally haven’t always liked the Hildi quests but it’s been so exciting to watch so many streamers get hooked for good on 14 by doing those quests. They are truly unique and so very very absurd!
The XIV litmus test: if you don't like to read, fuck off. Or pay the story skip, but don't complain that you don't like to read, because it's not made for you. It doesn't need to be. I would argue that any one MMO does not need to, and should not ever, appeal to everyone. I will say that if unlike JoCat you do not find yourself any closer to seeing what makes XIV the best MMO, do not force it or try to change XIV. Go do something else.
This video explains EXACTLY how I feel about the game. I love everything about the game, EXCEPT the MSQ fetch quests. I think I need to try and look at it at a different angle… One of my biggest gripes with games like this (not limited to MMOs) is watching my friends with a whoooole lot more free time than I do learn, grow and accomplish a lot of things. Leads to the friends essentially carrying me through the game and eliminating the challenge to a lot of raids. That said, I think I might just get back into the groove and I have you to thank JoCat. Thank you :3
The fetch quests are a pain and made me really miss the feature in City of Heroes where you could simply call the quest giver to hand in a quest and get a new one without having to traipse back (which wasn't as bad of an experience anyway as you could just fly or super jump or super speed back).
Basically me (though I don't usually like mmos, mostly prefer singleplayer games) but replace "catgirl" with "catboy" and then I fell in love with the story.
Replace catgirl with “I saw someone holding a scythe” and you have me at the moment, strongly considering buying the game just for that because scythes are my weakness.
Some people are so focused on the “MMO” part that they forget the “RPG” part of the full genra name. Nothing wrong with that, but it is something to consiter.
36:55 I feel like this is one of the most important things, taking your time with the MSQ. It's designed to be a slow burn, and it's worth keeping in mind that all this content has been released over the span of a decade. Sometimes the MSQ's momentum is high, sometimes it's low, and that's a very deliberate thing. Don't binge for sake of getting to something later, play at whatever pace feels natural, taking things at the pace that feels right in the moment. There's no shortage of non-MSQ things to do when the momentum of MSQ is at a low point, and in many ways the game actually expects you to take these breaks from the MSQ, as part of how it loosely establishes gaps in time in an immersive fashion.
Thats the important take away. At the same time there's so much motivation from the playerbase, and the game itself that incentivises progressing to "the better parts of the game", meaningful story pay offs, and in game rewards.
Msq is a huge, obligatory waste of time and I absolutely despise it. The curse of playing the game now that everything's out is that you either have to play for 2 years to unlock all the content gated behind msq or straight out pay for it. The only way I'd be ok with it is if I can "trigger" the dialogue and go about my business as an addon reads it to me & cutscenes playing in the corner of my screen. It is not a slow burn, it is a video of a fireplace playing on loop.
@@aliceblack3533 i think thats sort of a you problem? Because thats how the game is? Theres a very heavy emphasis on story in ffxiv. And if it isnt drawin ya in then i suggest hoping ship to another mmo. Cos this game really just aint for you if you really dont like the msqs and i say this in the nicest way possible. Because the reason it burns so slow is because you cant just expect your character to be legendary warrior of light right of the bat.
@@aliceblack3533 it’s a video of a fireplace where people talk about stuff and your “character” nods occasionally and then runs off to do whatever it is that they said to do.
I feel like a weird outlier for the fact that I was almost immediately invested in the story and the lore of the world right from the get-go in ARR, which started with my character actually FEELING like a character in the story instead of just an empty avatar and having a race that appealed to me on a spiritual level (Au Ra) helped with that further. I wanted to know more about mysterious folk like Hydaelyn and the Ascians and about locales that were mentioned off-hand like Ala Mhigo, Othard and Thavnair and it was just little teases like that kept me motivated to keep pushing forward. I'd constantly speculate about what was coming next in the story, and more often then not there were enough clues strewn about that I was able to make fairly accurate guesses, even for some of the more...outlandish twists like those introduced in ShB and EW. I agree that most of the actual quests in the MSQ are pretty dull gameplaywise, but the little bits of world building scattered about even in the random sidequests managed to hold my attention all the way through.
aye, I always enjoyed the low level, humbling experience of classic wow and so ARR hooked me from the jump (although I totally agree with Jo way more of its MSQ should be moved into side quests)
Yeah, I think the persistent comments of "getting to the good parts" was a bit of a flag. I get that it's like being told you have to finish reading this book to get a prize but the book itself is what most people love. Missing the forest for the trees big time.
@@5chneemensch138 The DRK job quest line is for you then. It's definitely there for those who don't match the intended "Goku" like character which the story is mostly written for; those who simply strive for adventure for adventures' sake. The expanded dialog options given in later expansions also helps give some breathing room as well.
@@DrunkCat1337 Dialog options? Do you mean as in option options like a CRPG or as in "yes, but actually no" like in Persona 5? A non-reactive character that just stands there like a corpse like in almost all calssic MMOs is way more of a character than a character that reacts outside of your control and is mute. Code Vein gave me an aneurism for that exact reason. I _really_ want to like FF14, but the game actively tries to push me away from it at every opportunity. Last time I logged on I was close to Heavensward, at lvl 58, Ninja.
Im more with Asmongold on this, ARR was amazing and it grabbed me more and more. Sure there were slow luls and repetativeness that made me take a break for a few hours and come back. But I love a good story, story is my jam in games and MMOs too apparently. As someone who spent 17 years on Wow /cough I can appreciate a good story in an MMO..which WoW was not for most of its lifespan. JoCat sounds to me like he isnt a story person, and thats ok. But then, he should've known beforehand the game is very story focused and thats the bees knees of the game. A 'main linear questline' to follow in an MMO should frankly be standard and the story actually good, like ff14 demonstrates. It should be a journey, a slow burn. I personally took 7 long months to go from ARR to Shadowbringrs 5.3 at the time and I had the best time in my life since playing Vanilla WoW all those many years ago. To really immerse myself in the universe, to craft and level (too many) jobs at the time to try out, gathering jobs, Anima HW Dark Knight sword questline that I really wanted to do to look like an awesome DRK when I was playing through ShB, I took my time and enjoyed it... It did help ALITTLE bit that when I started playing In feb 2020 the pandemic was in full swing and my job stopped being a thing for a few months so lol :( but yeah.
You can actually see the great potential of Ishikawa's writing from the Rogue Guild's quest. It just feels so different, stylish and fresh compared to other ARR stuffs.
For me I was skipping most dialogue and cutscenes until I got to Coerthas around lvl 35-40 IIRC. One of the characters mentioned a dragon sex cult and I was like... wait... I should pay attention now. That story about the heretics and the Inquisition hooked me good. I still hated most of the post 2.0 patch quests, but I diligently read through them all anyway, and when it came time for Heavensward, my understanding of the characters and the stakes made everything that much better. I agree that the quests themselves still aren't great, but the characters and the payoffs make it all worthwhile. Oh and the Extreme trials are a ton of fun and made me realize that progression raiding with randoms was a thing in this MMO, unlike some others.
I have really been considering getting into this game lately, actually after I watched a supercut vod you uploaded. This has pushed me more into the mood of getting it, thank you. Now I just need some people to play with.
I play this game p much loner and I can tell you that you don't need friends for this game. I bet it makes it better for some peeps but it's not needed to enjoy the game. I've managed to even get the HW extreme mounts aka the firebird mount p much without adding anyone to my friendslist
If you are someone like me who almost exclusively played single player games, you can progress through the game just fine by yourself. You can even do what I did and find a (safe) streamer fc and use them as a resource for progressing though the game (fc buffs are amazing, and even basic food will give you a 3% xp buff)
I went into it as a loner. I experienced the main story quests alone. And I really liked it that way. But one day I was invited into a random free company (guild), and for some reason decided to accept even though social gaming wasn't for me. Now it's been a few years, we've had our highs and lows, and we still play together, not only Final Fantasy, but pretty much anything we feel like trying out. I'm now part of a decently sized community that feels like a family, even though I went into FFXIV with the sole intention of playing an MMORPG by myself. So don't wait for people to play with. Go out there, get a feeling for the game, and if you enjoy it, maybe find a small community of your own. =)
At the end there and with my... Sort of passing into "veterancy"... I can 100% agree with the "Veterans love watching new players experience the story" because all the reactions of friends who've started playing are priceless through all the ups and downs of the story in the game. And, well, listening to their reaction when they find the Hildibrand questline is just flawless every time.
I just got to the gator family. And when i read that my cmpanions where equaly annoyd as me i really had to chuckel thinking about the laundry that would await. I was actually kinda worried you werent joking that much. Turned out to be a rather nice quest actually.
another thing they do sometimes that I really like, is a questgiver will give you a list of like, 3 chores that they want you to do, but then the characters with you will actually split up and do two of them so you only have to do one.
All those I had no fun untill hundret hours in talk is complete bullshit. If you didnt enjoy anything you wouldnt do it for 300 hours. What you mean is it has its peak after 300hours for you maybe.
I really appreciate what Jocat said starting at 14:04. I am one of those people who thought the story was great all the way through, But I have gotten hostility online when I say that I like ARR. It's fine to not like ARR, but don't get angry at people who do 20:11 Exactly right. I started out ARR role playing my character. This might actually explain why I loved ARR so much I wasn't there to get through the story ASAP. I was there to be my character
Yeah I'm not past Heavensward yet and I'll admit the writing is much tighter but like...ARR had so much to establish? It drags a bit at points, but they spend a lot of time establishing the world, the stakes, and the characters. I really do like ARR and its a shame people consider so awful, it just had a different job to do is all.
This is still one of my all time favourite FFXIV videos to revisit every couple of months just to go through the butterflies of finding and falling for this game all over again
"It has handsome elf men" Yeah... one of my friends simps for Aymeric, another simps for Estinien And I'm just sitting here like: "I think Lucia would be an amazing partner, she loyal!"
@@Avengedtenfold well she is loyal She’s loyal to aymeric She even says directly that she told him everything and he welcomed her regardless, and that she won’t hold herself responsible for or complacent to her sister’s choices Imo loyalty to your true calling takes precedence over loyalty to your origin
slight spoiler Lucia is my favorite Garlean. Nero and Cid share second place, partially because the idea of them sharing -anything- is hilarious to my mind. Aymeric is best elf though, no question. As for Estinian, ever since he and Ysayle met face to face I thought "they'd make a great couple".
Now I'm a straight white male, and I'm not sexually attracted to any of the hot elf men personally. But FFXIV is a very immersive game, and I play a young-adult elf bachelorette. And anyone who gets between me and a loving marriage with Aymeric will not survive to regret it.
This is art. I've been searching for a game to suck up my free time *and depression* and this convinced me to try FF14. This is a great primer for what the game is about and how it's not wrong to dislike parts.
FF14 healed or relieved a lot of people's depression. Just try to read as much as you can. There is not much fun combat in the first 60 levels. But the story, and Gold Saucer can eat up all your personal time lol.
37:49- My brother-in-law had me skip the cutscene before the vault dungeon in heavensward, and I would say whole-heartedly I missed out on something extremely important.
I think I'm odd. I loved FFXIV's questline. I loved the story, EVEN ARR. Maybe it's cause I was and am a book nerd, so the book-like feel of the slow burn story really resonated with me. . . . I also am someone who likes LotR book version and even own the collectors edition, so my tolerance for 'standing around talking' is pretty damn high. But I'm still at a point where I wish I could like this game more, and its all because of my friends, especially my boyfriend. They rushed me. A lot. I barely remember Stormblood because I blitz though it then quit the game. I came back for Shadowbringers and Endwalker--and those are my favorite expansions hands down--but the rush was just. My boyfriend wanted to raid, and wanted all his friends to raid. End content, first month release. So every time I wanted go off an do a side quest, I'd be told to do MSQ. Want to do crafting, do MSQ. Want to try the minigames, do MSQ. It. . . killed the game for me, for a story rushed is no story at all--and I love all the side content. I don't like combat, and grinding, and raiding--I'd rather spend 50 hours in the Gold Saucer racing chocobos. I guess I'm somewhat venting, but people, don't let anyone rush you through this game. Go at your pace, deviate as you want, and it'll be a LOT better.
What a horrible experience you got. For me, i keep deviating from the MSQ because of the side contents like crafting, obtaining relic weapons, leveling other jobs, side stories. My god, playing on a character then experiencing all the jobs is an amazing treat for me.
this is what killed it for me as well but in a different way, didn't have as much time as my friends and i wanted to be doing content with them so i kind of forced myself to rush to keep up, and i burned myself out as a result cause i realized at one point no matter how hard i tried i just could not keep up.
Phoenix, Cyber, I know it's not something that is usually recommended for FFXIV (in fact, many, MANY people say not to, but I COMPLETELY disagree with them), but I'd honestly advise an alt in a different world than the people that rushed you. Come up with a backstory that relates to the world. Keep that backstory in mind as you create your alt. Once you're in, actively go look for an FC in that world (there are usually plenty advertising), join their discord if they have one. Don't rush to catch up with your new FC mates as, more likely than not, they'll want you to take your time and would be more than happy to help you out with content and just hang out while you do stuff. Take your time. Play the game following the personality of your alt WoL. I love my main, but when I get bored playing on him (he's got nothing to do but levelling and roulettes right now, lol), I jump to one of my MANY alts with their various backgrounds and different personalities and just... play one of them. My main is a laid-back dude who was born in Doma but fled for Eorzea with his pregnant mother and two bodyguards when he was a child. I also have a quiet, yet sassy cat girl, my main's Super Serious baby brother (who was born in Eorzea), a super shy healer Au Ra healer who's emotionally fragile (and THAT'S super fun to imagine the backlash for when the person she has a HUGE crush on gets nuked saving her butt, and I even have personal story beats for that, such as a MASSIVE shift in focus on party roles), a mischievous Viera girl with self-esteem issues, and quite a few others, just because I enjoy imagining the story from the perspective of different personalities and races. Point I'm making is, if your experience on your main has been ruined, start fresh. Still play your main, still hang out with your friends, but have a side character somewhere away from the people that damaged your original experience and make it all new. Play how you want, when you want. Enjoy the main story, side stories, mini-games and the rest of the content at your leisure with no rush. Maybe just sit in the city-state with the most active social life (for me, who mostly lives on Coeurl over in Crystal DC, that's Limsa Lominsa with Gridania as a secondary location) and just... talk to other players. Listen to a bard for a while and chill. No limits, no rules, as long as you aren't a jerk to other players (though if it's the personality of your character, feel free to be a jerk to NPCs. lol). :) Hell, there are other ways to spice up your playing, too. For example, if you have a healer (or Red Mage with Verraise), write up a raise macro message to display your character's personality. For instance, one of my main's macros is, "No dirt naps on my watch! Up you get, (player name)!" You can also write macros that alter the message your emotes put in chat. I don't know how to do that myself, but I've seen it done and I think it's a cute way to add personality to your personal WoL. And oh, hell, I just realized how long this message has gotten. I think FFXIV's wordiness has affected me. lmao
I guess I'm the target audience for FFXIV. I love story, and I've really enjoyed playing through ARR reading and watching everything. I talk to everyone who is able to be talked to when I'm in an area, because often their dialogue changes depending on where you're at in the MSQ, and it enriches the story. I even went back and did the side quests with an alt job because I didn't want to miss them. It feels like I'm a character in a book, which is really cool. And I get to take breaks to go kill stuff with other people! It probably did help that I played through most of it with a friend doing the same quests at the same time, so it was a shared experience, with commentary. My only gripe is actually that the XP boost is a bit much. I'm way overleveled unless I want to do like 3 alt jobs. I can't complain too much though since I also remember when we didn't have it and the incredible slog that was at times.
Tbf I did come from the incredible grind that was Chinese and Korean MMOs. They have story, but most of the gameplay is killing thousands of mobs over and over. I'm still thrilled that quest drops are 100%
That ending made me smile so much 💖 that blushing fun is exactly how I felt when I used my free fantasia to change from hyur to fem-roe. Love that you embrace it you wonderful cat-boy! And I'm so glad you loved the Hildebrand quests. They seem to be very love/hate but I enjoyed them very much too.
I must be really weird, I actually super enjoyed ARR and read through all the dialogue and everything. It's like equal to HW for me, even stormblood almost (just got to shb so can't judge that yet!)
I'm 63, a retired college English professor, so getting deep into a piece of literature is a big part of who I am. To me, the action and fighting in a story are just necessary evils. I can say without reservation that the best way to get through the early game grind is to go slowly, read everything, watch all the cut scenes, do all the side quests, and just grind it out. Join a good Free Company and make friends to help you complete dungeons. In short, playing FF14 is like reading a multi-volume novel, not watching a 90-minute movie. Be patient. Learn the lore. Every quest teaches you something that you will find useful later in the game, though it might not seem that way at the time. The payoff is in knowing, really knowing, what's going on and who's involved.
This game single handedly taught me the virtue of patience. Sometimes learning to walk instead of running through life in general... You start paying attention to the things around you. It really does.
I feel like I actually would defend the "run in a straight line from one part of said spoiler area and back again a few times over a course of an hour or so" simply because if it were just cutscenes back to back to back, it would be overwhelming. Like, the downtime in moments like that lets you process or think/talk about what's going on so it doesn't just turn into channel surfing at 4 a.m. without really paying attention.
Theres gotta be a better solution than making the the travel extra boring, so the cut scenes feel comparatively less boring. It's like adding dirt to your porrige in hopes it will make the oats taste sweeter.
@@kodaxmax I'm not saying that it makes the cutscenes "less boring" I'm saying it's the difference between speed eating and having a normal meal. The space between gives things a moment to breathe.
@@writer747 Don't worry the cutscenes with any sort of weight to them already space themselves out with hours of meaningless drivel (whoops I meant setup). The msq is a visual novel, having to teleport/auto-run/watch a progression bar/kill 5 piss easy mobs in between adds nothing.
23:36 THIS. This makes me think about how EW [spoiler] . . . . . . . . . . brought up the 7th Umbral Calamity and how it wiped people’s memories, and how big a point it is for EW’s narrative. People will mostly forget that this is mention at the very beginning of ARR when we first arrived at the major cities.
@@25cats oh sorry about that. Will add after the cmt. Since the EW spoiler gate is lifted I wasn’t thinking to add warning. 7th Umbral Calamity wiping memories is mentioned in ARR so I don’t see this part is spoiler…At least you still have to discover how that point is related to EW at least? 😅 I don’t think anyone can guess without the context provided by EW anyway.
@@SoSakashii oh nvm, im totally on the wrong side here. My brain immediately activated the spoiler sensors for some reason and i misread everything. Sorry about that!!
Yeah, I felt that way about ARR and HW, too. There'd be a burst of phenomenal story elements, then it would crash back down. Plus, when your open world is...well...a barren desert of roaming content without any useful discoverability, it makes those fetch and chat quests just...terrible.
I feel like the odd one out cause I immediately loved the story and world building. By the end of ARR I did feel burned out ngl but the lore kept me going. I think it’s cause I love writing and making my own characters so I love experiencing world building and character development.
I was in a similar seat, thought I was lucky enough to have friends pushing me about. But I remember the exact moment I fell in love, I was gonna do the Shiva trial for the first time ever and thought the music was very pretty... Then everyone got frozen and it got all quiet, the finger snap happened and suddenly the punk rock ballad starts playing and I get goose bumps all over my skin. That was when I truly realised why my friends love this game so much. I'm not suprised that it was a song that finally really got me into the game, whenever I get interested in something it's usually related to some music I heard from said thing.
I'm a reader by nature and I devoured every last bit of XIV's story and even the quests. Yes, even the subquests. Some of those tell very interesting little stories or add just a bit more character to the zone or give a bit of trivia that you would have never known otherwise. To have it ALL come back and be important in Endwalker was just mindblowing.
I am like this too. I talk to npcs when they are gathered, even if they didn't have a quest to give, I would legit want to know more about the world and its people, and I always appreaciated what they shared, speciallly my fav npcs.
Thanks Jocat. A few of my friends recently got REALLY invested into FFXIV so I decided to join them, but ultimately ran into the same issues as you with ARR. I made it about halfway through trudging through the MSQ until I ultimately lost steam and gave up trying to get to the "good part" after about 30 hours of playtime while the rest of them got through Heavensward and are now well on their way through Shadowbringers. After watching this, hopefully I can give this game another chance with a new mindset, and not skip through all the dialogue this time. Wish me and my tiny conjurer "The Chris" luck! [EDIT 2023]: I got through Ifrit and gave the game another break, but by now I realized I don't really like the gameplay of being a White Mage. So I'm now having a way easier and more fun time as my tiny Summoner "The Chris"
I was trying out the game and skipping through all dialogues and cutscenes because I saw them as a waste of time, and as a creator that I value the opinnion of, I remembered you had a video on this topic, watched it entirely, and now I'm having way more fun with the game. Thanks catman ^^
The roleplaying part at the end of part 2 makes me feel, to synthesize it, that most stories, especially MMO stories, tell you why this or that NPC matter. XIV builds up over the course of many irrelevant moments and characters why -you- matter
It's taken me a while to get around to watching this video but I'm glad I finally did. Definitely one of your best videos you've made and I'm looking forward to content like this in the future. (Although, I guess a video about hundreds of hours of play might be just a bit hard to make a few of)
Heads up to people WHO REALLY Like the story? Please do not buy story skips and watch them? Theres ALOT of stuff the cutscenes dont cover. The little interactions between characters, the banter between your scion pals. I always read what the npcs have to say EVEN if i dont have to talk to them. Youd be surprised how much you can learn by just reading the one or two lines the idle npcs have. Hell alot of them made me laugh. Some made me sad. (A LITTLE BIT OF AN ARR spoiler? But the very first dungeon you do. You meet a trio of adventurers bummed that didn't get to the dungeon that you did but they get even more hyped to tackle their next endeavour. Literally at the entrance of the next dungeon if you talk to one of the npcs (THAT ACTUALLY END UP BECOMING SCIONS BTW) report that they fucking died. Proof of this is that they even show up in POTD. And thats ONE out of the MANY string of in world things going on. As jocat said its subjective but the game does a great job putting you into your characters shoes IF youre willing to let it do so. I dont think ive ever felt a game that made me have to work with it in sync and that made me feel more engaged? The game and yoshi p constantly says to take your time and i never understood what that meant until i just... Started being my character. Im in Shadowbringers right now and let me tell you. The feeling you get when you remember what your character used to be in ARR.. Its an amazing one. To see how far youve come.
I seem to have the opposite problem, in that I slack off every time I have to do a dungeon. I prefer soloing, which I acquired from my WoW days. Perhaps FFXIV would have been better served to me as a different genre but then I would have never engaged with it if it was an RPG, as I had a severe aversion to random encounters and my most experience with the Final Fantasy series at the time was the original NES cartridge, which had the mechanic of not having your fighters switch targets when their original targets were defeated and was a very clunky game. So I guess I'm glad FFXIV is an mmo, I may not have experienced it otherwise because what got me to try it was the videos on people jumping ship from WoW, particularly Asmongold's videos. This was long after I quit WoW (Cata) so I was not in the loop for what was happening.
You know, even despite being a long time FFXIV fan for whom this really is my main comfort game... After the beginning disclaimers of the video I can't help but think about how absurdly defensive the fanbase is, to the point Jo felt it necessary to include a tw for critique of the game, and honestly. It really is kinda ridiculous and I know we can be better than this so why *arent* we.
Well, I think the issue is that critiquing FF14 is difficult. Especially so for people who don't really understand why it's enjoyed by so many people. Of course, you don't have to enjoy something to critique it. But it's clear that for someone like Jo, his initial clear turn-offs and critiques eventually evolved into key parts of the game design as his approach to playing the game changed and he learned to appreciate it more for what it is, rather than what it isn't. I think one of the largest problems FF14 has is accessibility, especially for gamers expecting something else, and it's often what leads to many of the other critiques made that are then blasted by the community as ignorant takes. I don't think it's wrong to be protective of your own experience in the game, and what you eventually found to love about it. "But ARR is slow and kinda boring and nothing important happens for ages." Okay... But... that's kinda by design. It's not supposed to turn you off completely of course, but you can't jump into a whole new world and immediately be on the edge of your seat for 500 hours, and if you were, it would be an entirely different experience... and not necessarily "better." IDK, it's weird. And it's frustrating. Because I know "when you get it, you get it" is a shitty defence for critiques, but sometimes it's just hard to articulate without the same experience and history with the game.
@@NabsterHax Those are legitimate excuses, though. It's not difficult to critique FF14 at all, that's just a stock excuse. It can be critiqued like literally ANY other game out there on the market. It's not special. If the ARR is slow and boring by design, then that's bad design regardless of intent. There's no "It's okay because they meant for it to be that way." ARR is not an immersive experience, so it must be leading up to some SUPER AWESOME payoff down the line! If you're building up, there MUST be a point otherwise it's a liability in storytelling. Unfortunately... the best part of ARR is the movie you have to watch at the end of the base game and maybe the last hour or two of content. It's just unfortunate the slog through ARR isn't worth what we got. It was good, don't get me wrong, but not dozens of hours putting up with low-tier gameplay good was not worth the payoff that ARR gave. Ignoring flaws in the game and bashing on people who have contrary opinions on things is just the community being toxic fanboys-- plain and simple. The FF14 community likes to play themselves off as "a better community than any other MMO", but that's certainly not the case, there is a LOT of this toxic fanboyism in the community, and you simply cannot have a legitimate conversation with people like that. Back on topic, it's not just ARR, the MSQ in general is pretty slow and a slog (especially from ARR through Stormblood). It's exposition dump after exposition dump even onto current day (although it's a little better than it was pre-Shadowbringers.) This is just sub-par story-telling. Not bad STORIES--I actually love the stories themselves-- but the method of telling them is just so... low effort. So little nuance and everything just spat out at you piece by piece. I feel like I'm a toddler being read a story with extremely flowery speech. There is so little "filling in the dots" that everything is extremely predictable and there's nothing to really grip anyone who legitimately enjoys a good story. It certainly did get better with SB and EW... but to be honest, too little too late. The game relies too heavily on heavy-handed nostalgia, and doesn't work for many people. People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game... that's also an example of poor game design (and once again, a generic stock excuse.) I don't feel like I wasted my years with FF14, but I've noticed that anything outside of story has just been flat-lining for several expacs and it's just not improving... well, fast enough at least. The Golden Saucer is only fun for so long and outside of logging in to do dailies, there's just not much to do. If you're a story-heavy game, especially an MMO, you have to be able to provide adequate gameplay after the story has ended, otherwise it's just stagnant until the next expansion. They did add some new things to do in EW, but they're... okay? I guess? Baseline functions that don't add much to the game, to be honest. Granted, I don't HATE the game by any means, but as someone who can see all the faults in the game it's absolutely ridiculous when people can't criticize a game they love because mindless drones feel like they CAN'T criticize a game they love.
@@sarkaztik3228 "People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game..." Sorry, but I completely disagree with this statement and it undermines the rest of your comment. It is blindingly obvious that not all games will suit all people's tastes and compromising the enjoyment of your target audience with excessive accessibility is not an automatically good design decision - it often trades the strength of the target experience for a wider appeal. A criticism that boils down to "this game doesn't do things how I like" is not valuable criticism to those who enjoy the things you do not like. I've already said it's easy to criticise the accessibility of FF14, among other things, but the problem comes when people assert that their idea of how to change the design is some kind of self-evident improvement. What you write off as "heavy-handed nostalgia" is actually a much, much more important aspect of the game experience than you give credit for. One of the reasons FF14 makes such a successful MMO is the shared experience among its players. ARR, for example, on its own has many, many flaws that are easy to spot on a first playthrough and in hindsight. It's not a BAD experience, but it could obviously be better. But the real issue is that ARR, warts and all, is at this point an important part of FF14's shared experience. Whether you started playing 10 years ago, or a few months ago, all players will have experienced basically the same ARR. And by the time each player gets to the new and shiny expansion, they all have an extremely similar history with the game's narrative. You could update ARR, improve it and make it more to the higher standard of the game's later expansions (which has happened in part with some trimming of quests), but if you change the experience too much what you actually achieve is locking new players out of the same experience as veterans. And new and old players having quite a different shared memory of the ARR portion of the game. It's not wrong at all to love an older game for many of its flaws as much as anything else. You can criticise its dated design, sure, but ask the players that fell in love with the original experience if it should be changed and many will say "no" or vehemently disagree on which elements are vital to preserve, and which are expendable. People know FF14 isn't perfect - that's not the issue. The issue is more that you can't do a whole lot to change that without making the game NOT FF14 anymore. "People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game..." It absolutely is on the player to approach a game on its own terms. If I try to play Dark Souls like it's a cinematic button masher, I'm gonna have a bad time. If I try to play Counter-Strike like it's COD, I'm gonna have a bad time. If I try to play FF14 like it's not a hundreds hour long slow-burn classic JRPG I'm gonna have a bad time. I'm also personally in disagreement with you about content between expansions. There's actually regular story content additions, as well as added content for crafting and gathering, and regular release of new raid content (savage, alliance, ultimate) that are very entertaining on their own. The game doesn't try to stretch out its content and make you play it until you're sick of it. You do what you want and then stop playing until something new that you want to do comes along. Disliking this style of content release is obviously a highly subjective criticism.
@@NabsterHax The fundamental problem with all of FFXIV's story is that instead of the tried and proven storytelling method of "beginning, middle, end, facts, details, condense, plot, tell it," the entire experience follows a method of "beginning, beginning, beginning, middle, facts, details, details, details, tell it." A needlessly bloated story that takes an eternity to go anywhere with no tangible buildup is not a good story. This isn't Steins;Gate, and fans need to stop pretending it is. This is a high school student's rejected first draft in fiction writing 101.
Oh so that's what i did wrong, I didn't watch a single cutscene not even the unskippable ones (I was so offended it wouldn't let me skip them that I disassociated through them), will try paying attention next time
I just got into heavensword and have been doing this. To be fair I did 80+ quests and leveled once so ot just felt like a treadmill. Maybe I will slow down...
**Hits the 20 minute mark** Well, this explains why I've had a pretty good time most of the way thus far. I've been roleplaying pretty heavily. As I tend to do in any game that allows for it. (Although for the longer fetchquesty type stuff, I put on podcasts or other stuff in the background, and yet, still manage to not be de-immersed). I guess it helped that I started off playing as if it was kind of an adventurer simulator, where just doing random side tasks felt rewarding. I do have to say, I think some of the fluff should still be cut down a little more. Or at least, I vividly remember (avoiding context to avoid spoilers) when I was in the middle of a super important task that had interrupted an (in my eyes) even more important task, I did not appreciate having to go get a corrupted aether crystal only to end up on multiple wild goose chases for what seemed like a simple task. ...When the last NPC in that chain made a joke that it was the wrong one again, I did not laugh. Instead, I imagined my character strangling that NPC with his own Paladin Robes and hucking them off the nearest cliff. Heavensward WAS where the story really grabbed me by the lapels and was like "YO! Crazy stuff is happening and ALL THE PAYOFF IS HAPPENING. This is no longer a laid back relaxing basic-ass chosen one story, now there's nuance and drama!", but my gods even my usually long patience got tried a little on the way. XD Seriously, the Dark Knight quests are excellent, and fit my mood *perfectly* at that point in the story. It starts off a little weird, but the payoff is REAL good.
Oh my god, this is the first time I've ever heard any content creator acknowledge Fiesta Online's existence. That was the game that helped 14 year old me learn that pretending to be a girl online, even if it's just because my lack of interest in cars and sports made me insecure about my masculinity, was still lying, and that the relationships built upon that lie, even if they flourished because I was still, mostly, being myself, could still come crumbling down at lot easier than if I were just straight with people about who I am and what I'm about from the get-go. It also made my mom think I was gender dysphoric, which I still sometimes have to remind her I am not.
Just watched this for the first time after finishing shadowbringers after 3 years. Me as a player of games told my friend who said if I wanted to just buy a story skip for ARR "Nah, I'm playing this the "right" way" fast forward to me stopping halfway through. Fast forward to about a year and a half ago my friend was begging me to get back on and he would buy me a story skip. I again said "no, If i play it I wanna play the whole thing." After he went to bed that night I decided to get back on and start playing again. I started playing more and I finally got through ARR. Then I got to Heavensward. It changed the game for me. I love Heavensward. Some of my favorite characters and by far my favorite moment in the game so far. The big sad moment... If you know, you know. I flew through Heavensward and then I got to stormblood which I did not like nearly as much and even now I dont really remember much outside of the ending and some of the characters that were in it. But then I hit shadowbringers. I was starting to get burnt out and I was really enjoyed the story that I had played but About when you meet Urianger again I stopped. My friend begged me to get back on and I just couldn't. He kept telling me that "you are finally getting to the best parts of the game. just keep pushing". I just couldn't I was so burnt out. I had played the game for over a 100 hours in like 3 weeks. It was literally all I was playing and the only thing I was doing was story. It almost reminds me of One piece. It is LONG and there are rough areas. BUT there are so many good parts and they Far outweigh the bad parts. And some of my favorite moments in the storytelling of their respective mediums. And would you know it. I finally watched one piece over the last year and just caught up a few weeks ago to see gear 5 in the anime. rewind back to ep 1000, God did I get emotional watching the "We Are" redo. On another note my main game for the last 7 years of my life was Destiny. The game that honestly changed my view on what a game could achieve. I met my best friends on that game and god do I love it. And if anyone knows about the Destiny situation right now, It just finally defeated me, I've become completely apathetic with it. And god do I hope they flip the script and make Destiny the game it can be. Because it is heartbreaking for me to look at the state it is in. With the decline of Destiny. It gave me the drive to continue FF14. I hopped back on and as of yesterday night have finished all of shadowbringers patch quests and all. And god... was that some of the best storytelling I've ever had the joy of watching, listening, and reading. probably my favorite villain in Emet. some of the best characters in the game. and Just some of the best moments like i said in it's medium. I'm beyond exited to play Endwalker and I hope that more people can enjoy the story as much as I have. :)
Ngl I’m about 40 hours in and this came at a perfect time. It’s been rough getting through lv 20 MSQ when I already have a lv 40 job bc of how slow it was I picked up archer just to do it. It’s made me want to actually pay attention at least for now I just feel like I don’t have that much time to play so I want to enjoy it not fo fetch quests. And there’s a lot of game mechanics that I havnt experienced yet and don’t really have a veteran to go through the game with so we’ll see how jt goes. I’ve been hype af for this game ever since it went on hiatus and stopped being sold
Do what one of my friends did, play it for a set amount of time. Especially ARR, I honestly think for at least ARR playing it in bite size increments does a good enough job to ease yourself. I'll give you a tad of context, in 2.1 and 2.2 is what I'd consider the roughest patches of the game, but that's mainly due to the fact that SE though XIV would collapse relatively soon, so when the progress numbers came out just before 2.25, the player base at the time (roughly about 400-800k accounts) were celebrating. Then comes 2.3 trailer and people see the new class speculation (Ninja tease) and Crystal Tower is introduced. 2.4 with Ninja introduction....the game was heading towards expansion and speculation was on the rise. ARR post patches could be seen as much of a test-bed of things that worked and didn't work. Things that would eventually not make it to other expansions. Slowly the player systems in the game get better along side the story. Sure you'll have those lulls in the story or things that make you go 'wtf' or 'why didnt this get cut'. Honestly with how gamers get treated by corporations to actually have games with good stories of old....in the modern day is seem like a false sense of hope. To get it and ask "what is it" just shows how jaded people get when faced with bad story writing.
This irks me so much! I get boosting EXP to let people catch up to the story faster, but ugh, it's so frustrating to feel like you're getting behind on the MSQ if you so much as sneeze outside the it. I too picked up a second job, but I just find it frustrating. I would have preferred having to do some sidequests between MSQ story beats, so the "saving the world"-thing is balanced out by more mundane adventures. But I guess the more impatient could go do duties or levequests or hunting logs or---- I think there should at least be the option to turn it off.
I'm gonna have to ask one of my buddies if he shares any of these feelings, he was the first friend I dragged into 14, I happen to fall into the "purest" style of playing, I heard you describe it as a visual novel in a stream, so that's what I was expecting, and that's what I got, I enjoyed the MSQ... except the lead in to Titan, which I have helped everyone of my friends through now just to speed it up, one of our other friends got the trial right before they stopped sales, and they took to the game hard, to the point where they've surpassed me in the story and is now waiting for me to catch up. But the friend I got playing with me first, he's dropped off, and when I asked why, he never gave me a straight up answer, so I have a feeling that he has some of the same feelings you did. And it doesn't help that I've been one of those "Don't skip the story" people, at least early on.
I was in a dark moment of my life when I started FFXIV, depressed and spending most of my day in bed doing absolutely 0. Then I caught by chance on the fact a friend of mine was playing 14 (back during Stormblood, he was finishing off what was out of 4.X) and I thought it was my chance. MMO take very long to play and are technically eternal as long as you want, so if I managed to get invested I would have a reason to get out of bed and the depressive cycle. I gave absolutely 0 fucks about the busywork and although I could hardly say I loved 2.0 (I remember joking about the robot being the best character because I gave that few fucks about most everyone at that point), I did not mind. At some point of me playing this game to force myself to do something, it just... Clicked. I learnt to appreciate the game, and retroactively came to really like ARR despite its many irritating flaws. I would say I'm one of the few people who is very fond of 2.X because it was when the setting truly became interesting to me. So yeah, I can understand not everyone is in a mindset where busywork that makes the game take longer to finish is a positive. I can understand some people struggle with it and I've always said to those I've introduced to the game that it takes long but the payoff is great so please try it.
I feel in love around reaching heavenswarn. Played it like a Final Fantasy game, not a MMO. ARR was bad. Everthing else? Fucking awesome. Became my fave final fantasy.
Honestly? ARR is just world building. don't even think of it as it's own story. see it as the world building that makes the foundation of the rest of the game through the current endwalker release. The best way to deal with ARR is to just really not mind it. look at the world enjoy the locations and take the msq as just something that builds the lore of the world your starting to dive into.
@@kayflarenight So the best way to approach ARR is pretend like you're not wasting dozens of hours of time on fairly lackluster world-building, paper-thin lore, and pointless quests? Telling someone to just ignore massive problems with the game doesn't do anything to help actually improve the massive issues with the game. It took them so many years just to slightly streamline the hot garbage that is ARR and it'd still be better just to be able to skip and just watch cutscenes on UA-cam.
@@sarkaztik3228 I didn't find ARR to be that bad. and generally i feel that people new to mmo's wouldn't find it that bad either, it only really feels off if you try to run it and it's post content straight through. Honestly i found myself hating stormblood far more then ARR.
ARR was a slog for me and I probably "quit" 2-3 times. Just not enough group content in an MMO early on in game to keep a lot of people interested and the combat is a snore fest considering they give you all these cool new class abilities but then you can't use any of them because the dungeons are lower level. That was my favorite part of since I found the narrative somewhat weak/overrated until Heavensward, and even toward the end of that and into the start of Stormblood it wasn't that great either. I'm hoping it gets better, but I'm about halfway through Stormblood at this point and really the only thing that keeps me going is dailies and doing dungeons and raids with friends. The music and dungeon designs are also really good and the one thing this game has going for it is that it's actually pretty relaxing to play. Edit after Completing Stormblood: So I'm approaching 400 hours in the game and just finished up the Stormblood expansion and I think it's fair to say that FF14 really just suffers from overall bad quest design. Stormblood didn't get good until the last act, the last 30 quests or so were really enjoyable because it was nonstop battles and action and cut scenes, but prior to that it was a boring slog that made little narrative sense. Hopefully Shadowbringers improves on the quest design, but the worst thing is that most of the expansions and game in general just involves the most tedious fetch quests where you literally have to go all the way across the map to interact with someone for 30 seconds, then go all the way back over to where you came from. You are hardly ever in combat until the end of an expansion when they start to throw all the climactic battles/finale at you. This is made worse by Aetherites not being in good locations and the fact you have to unlock the flying on each map before you can travel quickly back and forth. SE could alleviate a lot of pain by just making flying open from the get go, or just making you do one quest to get all the nodes unlocked so you can fly soon when getting to a new area. Far too much time is spent traveling back and forth and going on meaningless quests that make you forget about the overall narrative about whatever expansion you are doing. I mean at this point it has to be a meme how many people need help gathering food for a feast while some world ending threat is literally on their doorstep about to wipe them out. Heavensward really seems to be the peak of FF14 for me so far, mainly because the questing was a lot more involved, stayed around the narrative, and offered a lot more combat and action than ARR or Stormblood. I'm also noticing an issue where they will introduce really interesting characters, but you only get to interact with them for 5-6 quests and then they are gone and irrelevant for the rest of the game or they get killed off. So many characters get introduced through questing that are much more interesting than any of the scions or the crew you are normally stuck with and it's a shame to see so many just tossed by the wayside instead of having longer arcs and interaction with the WoL.
glad you found a way to get into it. For me, I was hooked from the very beginning. It's like the game was made for me. Completely immersed and filled with joy from the instant I got off the boat in Limsa. I still can't completely empathize with people who find ARR to be a slog, but I try to respect it and come up with ideas of how they can enjoy the game anyway. story skipping just ARR then watching all the cutscenes might be the answer- though there's a thousand little things in ARR I'd never want to miss- like Hildibrand or the Postmoogle quests.
My close friend playing the game was so conditioned by other MMOs (WoW, GW2, the ARR grind) to expect nothing of value from the story or writing that they skipped several arcs worth of Hildibrand cutscenes without really knowing what was going on. If they start playing again, we'll be sure to right this wrong.
You've nailed everything I felt throughout this entire video for me, now I'm hoping the latter half of your experience is true too :) Definitely gonna give FFXIV another shot now especially now that my friends are also sucked into it Oh and amazing redesign. Perfection.
That was a very interesting and enjoyable watch! While I didn't experience a lot of stuff you went over about the MSQ, I did feel some burn out with it at points despite how much I was enjoying the story, its definitely not something you can binge easily even if you do enjoy it a lot. I have found myself struggling to get into the game though but for a completely different reason that I hope I can find a solution to soon, especially since I do love the game very much and see how good it can get, its just getting past this problem that is proving to be tough. Which that problem is not being able to confidently do anything in the game. Whether its just daily roulettes, trying to learn extremes or savage fights, finding a static, or just talking to people, I always find myself very hesitant or scared to do it, no matter how much I do want to do it. And its only really with FF that I have been experiencing this, I used to play WoW before FF, and while I experienced this problem a bit there, it was never this bad. I know FF's community is very forgiving to people, especially people new to a situation, but I still find myself extremely hesitant to do stuff, I have to push myself to even just do daily roulettes. I know no one will probably never see this, but if by any chance someone does and has experienced this same problem or something similar and has found a solution to it or you think you might know a solution, I'd greatly appreciate any insight anyone might have.
Let's be real, ARR is the resilience check of a FFXIV player, if you get past it, you get past anything. Also Jo, yes, your voice is amazing to listen to. Your self is so quiet and warm and level headed for this video, talking about a topic that touches a lot of people. You make your opinion very heart warming, and you just are such a man. Also the conclusion and ending.
Same exact story my man, then fell in love with it. Person I was dating at the time was super into it and heavensward was about to drop so I had to super grind it. Now years later they no longer play it and I was way more into it and doing extreme raids
I hated the Hildebrand quest line. But I hung in there cause dammit I wanted that green chicken! I don't collect pets, mounts, anything. But I just had to have that chicken lol. But I very much agree that Endwalker is the best expansion. I went through the whole story the hard way last year and yep, Endwalker is the best.
This is somewhat how I felt at one point too! I played the game with friends, who I ended up not having around as much as I used to, so it felt awfully lonely doing the stuff by myself after it. It still does honestly, but I do want to find a cool FC and make new friends, I'm just honestly not very good at opening up and meeting new people, so that's my problem! I used toskip the story dialogue a bit, but going back to watch the story and then witnessing the story where I am now, I wish I never skipped it! It's still not a game I can play for hours on end, might be able to if I met people in it, but for a few hours at a time it's great!
I was in the same boat too for a long while, and honestly I met my current friends through some insane FC circumstances 😂 Basically a lot of FC drama and FC-hopping happened, we soon realized we kept seeing each other in the same ones, and just kinda banded together as the "no drama" trio that got along with everyone. 😅 Sometimes friendship just blindsides you even when you don't have much people skills. 😂
I think most people playing this game confuse plot and story-telling. The overall plot of the game is solid, even great at times. Its story-telling however, the actual way you experience the story and how it takes you from its beginning to its end, really isn't good. 60 to 70% of it is padding. Padding that really doesn't contribute to the main plot, world building or character interaction. And although I'm not done with the MSQ yet, I seriously doubt that I need to "pay attention to everything because the game will reward me for it". I'm pretty sure the whole section in the Azim steppes will never be mentioned ever again, except if they want to remind me of how I, the warrior of light, spent an afternoon picking up literal shit in a field with some kids, or how I run errands for the asshole chief of a tribe I was supposed to compete against the next day. Top-tier story-telling, some of the best in the whole of gaming... Generally speaking, I think that a game should be good within the first three to five hours. An MMO might get an extra ten hours, but I don't really think it's justified considering the glacial pace at which they introduce new features and systems to the players. ARR is at least 60 hours, and you have to be really forgiving to think that any part of it is good enough to justify this kind of time investment. If FF14 is your hobby, I guess that's acceptable, but if gaming is your hobby, I find it extremely hard to justify. I'm glad people enjoy this game, I really am. But as someone who is really passionate about video games as an artistic and narrative medium, I am always sad to hear that FF14 is some of the greatest story-telling in video games, because that is a clear sign to me that whoever said this should play other games.
I understand your point, but how are you going to use examples of world building and then say that it's padding? How do you even distuingish the two then? Because I'm very much like you, I see the importance of a great narrative in games like you do, and I agree to an extent. In saying that, your comment comes across as pretty passive-aggressive, essentially saying if someone finds the story to be of such a high calibre that they need to play more games. I am one of the people that finds FF14's story to be amazing, not perfect, but it does an incredible job of rewarding you for paying attention to even minor details, probably better than any game I've played. You say that you doubt those things will ever be brought up again, and trust me when I say that a good portion of them are, even in sidequests or npc dialogue that most people never see. Judging from your comment, I'm guessing you're around Stormblood, which most people consider to be the weakest of the expansions, so you'll just have to come to your own conclusion when you've played further. However, I'm not saying that's an excuse for lazy story-telling, like "Oh you haven't played all the way? Opinion disregarded", but a lot of stuff gets recontextualized and almost becomes better in retrospect. You may not feel that way though and that's fine. MMO's inherently have an issue with padding in their stories by nature of how leveling or zone progression often works. It is a problem with the genre itself, but FF14 handles it better than probably all MMO's that I've seen, and I often hate that style of story delivery. But to say that 60 to 70% of it is padding, well that's just plain exaggeration, unless you consider any semblance of world building or character interaction to be filler.
Hey, I just wanna thank you for making this video. A friend linked it to me a couple of months ago now, and it inspired me to gave the game *one more shot*, and take your advice about how to go about playing. I'm super into it now, more than I ever thought I would be! I'm having the best time, this game has now permanently altered my brain chemistry. THANK YOU!
16:20 I was tabbed out for this part as I was working on a avatar, but the moment I heard this music, I looked back to see your character running across Eulmore and I knew **exactly** what part of the quest chain this is from. And gods, yes, that whole arc is obnoxious. Honestly, certain parts of the game feel unnecessarily large in order to justify having flying. Also, to nitpick, you wouldn't have been able to fly to your quest giver at that particular point in that zone's quest chain. Even if you had found all the Aether Currents and the Aether Current unlock quests (and those only become available at staggered intervals in each zone's overarching MSQ chain), you would STILL be forced to go by ground, as the very last Aether Current you need in order to fly is tied to the climax of the zone's MSQ chain, and as you saw from the footage there, Jo was still a good seven Main Quests away from that point.
My main problem with that entire area was instead of the game playing the locale's ambient soundtrack, it played this bombastic score that hypes up moments of triumph. The music choice itself was bad for me, because putting in epic music when you're walking from point A to B just to talk to someone makes the music less epic. You wouldn't have Warthog Run play when you first exit out of the escape pod, now would you?
@@Ch4pp13 Yeah, I have to agree there. While I really like that track, having it on constant repeat not only diminished the epicenes as we're simply carting our ass back and forth across the zone, but it started to get on my nerves.
@@beoweasel They sort of did the same thing with a section near the end of Endwalker, but they cut back on it, which is done well if you ask me. (not saying anything more because spoilers)
I found another way I got into the game was to have a specific look for my character. Once I started to use the glamor system it really helped to feel like it was MY character going on the adventure rather then just some random guy.
JoCat I want to thank you for giving my wife and I the encouragement to push through and give this game a second chance and we both are absolutely hooked. Still on the free trial, but we're gonna try to do everything we can in it before committing money to it
As a WoW refugee who started playing this for my Wife, I've been struggling on weather or not I was gonna buy a story skip since my wife and I are just hitting the center of Stormblood. I was having FOMO about Endwalker. My Wife, explores EVERY nook and cranny, but I love playing with her so much so I don't really mind. I just made a character I play with her. Slow, steady, we read, we do every side quest. We spend weekends crafting or going to the golden saucer. I also have another character, that I smack content with a bat, I don't read. I don't bother watching cutscenes. But I can't get myself to grind that side character past the story my wife and I have gotten to. I'm glad I haven't story skipped. Because the story so far is making me feel things And i love the quality time, (we both work and have two kids). I won't be story skipping, The endgame content will be there when We do make it.
The best thing about XIV is that there's never any fully obsolete content. There is someone out there who will be happy to run the old Coils of Bahamut, whether you want it easy mode or hard mode. Much of the story is "go at your own pace." Sure, you could race to level 90 and start trying to prog P1S, but for what? That's just the loot treadmill version of the fight, getting better gear to be able to fight faster to.... get better gear. The story was already told in P1-4 which are freely available at any time, and which people will continue doing long after P1S is easy. Let your FOMO go. *Except* when it comes to time limited events. They're here for two weeks, and then gone for a year, at which point the content is gone forever and the rewards go up for sale on the Mogstation for $5. Don't skip V-day!
A useful tip:
If you accidently skip a dialogue box (or the dialogue goes in one ear, out the other) OPEN THE CHAT and go to the "Event" tab (assuming it's the default settings) and you can see all the spoken dialogue from the NPCs. Saved my bacon a few times.
helps me TREMENDOUSLY on unvoiced cutscenes since you can fast forward and read it all on event
and in cutscenes you can double tap and it will open up the chat log
you can also re-hide the chat box by right clicking any of the tabs then hitting hide
**beware though, this click will advance the cutscene by one line**
and if you want to hide the cursor in a cutscene, just double tap escape to open and close the skip cutscene box
or enable then disable text auto advance (press space bar then the confirm keybind 2x)
or just press the confirm keybind (this also advances the conversation 1 line)
omg dude I've been playing until Shadowbringers without knowing that. Thank you SO much!
It took me forever to realize that was possible, thank you for sharing so others don't suffer my pain lol
Dear Catboy,
As someone allergic to MMOs I really appreciate your take on this, Jo. I briefly tried FFXIV with some friends and the social aspect is what appealed to me but _everyone_ I know adores the narrative, at least to some extent. Still don't think the typical MMO combat/pacing/structure is for me but maybe one day I'll have to set aside a couple dozen hours and fall down an explainer rabbit hole. Also thanks for the lil' shoutout haha.
Yours, Bee Boy
I'm already excited about the How About This Game on that subject :P
Even by MMO standards, FF14 starts out INCREDIBLY slow-paced and, in my personal opinion, boring. There are absolutely MMOs with far more interesting combat systems.
'A Good Enough Summary of FFXIV' :D
Hey, not every game is for everyone, and as much as I'd enjoy the hell out of "A Good Enough Summary" for this game, if it's not your jam, don't jam it!
Love your work, Barry, keep rocking it out.
Aren't you sleeping
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for talking about how boring the actual gameplay is within the MSQ. I felt like I was genuinely being gaslit by the community when I would complain and just flat out be told I was wrong for feeling that way.
Yeah for SURE felt that while going through shadowbringers. It was starting to piss me off lol. Like, I’ve slain gods, felled dragons, liberated countries and weakened an empire and I’m somehow still doing FETCH QUESTS!? I’m an international hero!! So why am I literally delivering SANDWICHES in some small msq quests or aetherite quests? 😂
I've been told how the story gets so much better after ARR. When I finally get there, 60 hours in the game, I discover the new realm and MSQ. Nice. Then I get out of the city after the initial introduction. Literally the first task I get is to speak to some random dudes in watch towers to give the reports back to the quest giver. My mental state broke instantly. I quit and uninstalled the game. I couldnt bear to keep doing those stupid quest one more second, because I was assured after ARR, its all but a sweet cake. Point A point B go back to A. Travel to C, speak to randoms, Go back to A...
Who in its right state of mind can tolerate this for dozens and dozens of hours ? A shame. Cause I got invested in the story. But GOD, the gameplay loop and progression is HORRIBLE. And the combat is not engaging one bit.
I've been thinking of going back to FFIV. But this experience paired with the fact I have to pay a month of subscription to even try the game again... Its like a MASSIVE warning for me. Anyway, the community is as toxic as it can get with anyone having critics toward the game. Imagine being so positive you become exactly what you despite. There's an utopia gone wrong kind of vibe in FF community.
@@mimmim13aiv Damn, and here I thought I was angry about it as just a scrub. I think the part where he talks about the mindset change is going to be key for me, and probably for you as well. It seems we have no choice but to either not play, play miserably (like idiots) or learn to accept that despite all of the greatness the plot itself thrusts upon you and praise it heaps, you're still always gonna be the world's most beloved part time errand boy/girl too. Like a former postal worker who can't escape his roots even upon somehow making it big as a multimillion dollar CEO somewhere but still insisting to do coffee runs and carry paperwork for his subordinates cause he just can't stop delivering shit and everyone knows it so they keep asking him to.
@@Taima I know this is a bit late but his advice about changing your mindset really helps, doing all this random bullshit does explain how people are so willing to help us halfway through or at the end of the msq, Haurchefant is a great example.
Anytime I felt like I was getting bored of the msq, I would switch into doing something else like levelling up other jobs or just doing other side quests.
@@crapcase3985true! I often go and do things like beast tribe, level grinding, even just taking a quick break to eat a snack and watch a video. Or I’ll do roulette and Wonderous tails
I have a friend who started FFXIV a few months ago and he always lets me know when he unlocks a dungeon or trial so that we can run it together as he feels more comfortable when doing group content with someone he knows. One time afterwards he thanked me for always getting on to run stuff with him and I said, "I'm going to let you in on a little secret: veteran FFXIV player *love* watching/listening to new players go through the MSQ because (in my experience) we want to be able to play through the story for the first time again and living vicariously through new players is the closest we can get." He said he felt used XD
6/2022 Update: He just reached Endwalker and got someone to cover his shift at work to play it all day XD
True, I want to get one of my friends into it further just to be there when they do stuff.
That's true and awww that's actually adorable. XD
so this is the reason why my friend always wants to be on voice when I play....bastard using me for his own pleasures :D
Also, we really enjoy watching them die to the stuff nobody sees coming the 1st time.
(In regards to the update)
Weaksauce.
I took a weeks vacation and no lifed it
I hope you all enjoy this video as it has been a year in the making - not constant work mind you, more on-and-off over the time its been in production, but a long time coming regardless
I'm happy to have these thoughts that have been nagging at my mind for so long to finally be out there
it's a big loveletter to the game and my own closure to these complex feelings I've had about the game for so long
This video's already a joy and it's been like five minutes in for me. Thanks for making this, dude, your content's always guaranteed goodness.
I was showed this video by a friend who actually just got in to FF14! He tried before but this time around he's hooked.
Glad you're finnaly feeling comfortable as your true catboy form. Loved the video ❤
Thank you for the hard work
I really liked this video. I strongly related to a lot of your experience with this game.
After trying FFXIV several times over several years, I recently got hooked when I started treating the MSQ as an old school single-player RPG that just happens to have other people playing it too. That might sound kind of dumb, but it has made all the difference for me.
Instead of trying to rush through the main quest line and being mostly apathetic about it, now I’m actually engaged and interested. I’m no longer in a hurry to get to “the good part” because, like you said, it’s about the journey.
There is some pretty cool stuff along the way, if you’re open to it - and I agree that the Hildebrand quests are definitely some of the best stuff.
I made my journey through the MSQ so much better by practicing my Voice acting. I would try and give any random NPC voices and it was pretty fun and also helped me pay attention to what was happening.
thats so smart... trying this (currently in HW post patch)
You'll enjoy it! I did a second playthrough with a friend and we took turns giving the NPC voices
That's SO CRINGE. literally grow up
@altaiir541 bro grow up Jesus
@@FNigslol he's just having fun with a friend man, literally no harm done, not even a cringey video to stain the internet with. also great voice actors are a key feature of modern gaming and series/movies, so weird thing to take issue with someone doing it for fun
you came in out of nowhere and accidentally outed yourself as being insecure, so i hope you get past whatever's bothering you because shittier people could give you a harder time for doing things like this
"And now you know how to enjoy FFXIV. You're Welcome!"
"Yes this is a real thing, this is happening now, I like this it just makes me happy." I could hear him blushing at the end and Jo. I have not giggled so hard EVER! You are adorable and I can't Wait to see more content.
BUT WHERE'S THE TAIL JOCAT!? WHERE'S THE DAMN TAIL!?
Jocat being happy about a thing made me happy 😊
And the little cat mouth smile after that, so adorable!
And if anyone has a problem with it, the community will TAKE THEM OUT cause they BE WRONG!!
Egg??
This video is the main reason I now enjoy FFXIV. I had much of the same gripes at first but I also now enjoy the game immensely for much of the same reasons. Thank you for making this!
It's slow at first but starts to pick up pace after level 50.
Every one says this but here I am level 61 and it still feels as boring @@sammicopor
I love the game, and the story, but the main story quests do kinda suck a lot of the time gameplay wise. Especially for me since I personally enjoy crafting gathering more than combat, but all my progress is level locked behind the MSQ. So I have to do it, I enjoy the story, but gameplay wise it's me having to take a break from what I wanna do right now to walk back and forth between NPCs for like 30 min, then maybe fight a mob or two, or do a dungeon. The boss fights I love though, not as a big a fan of the dungeons, but they're not bad either. I just get unlucky and always have to do them when I wanna be doing something else.
The "older players love watching newbies go through the story" thing is very, VERY true with me. I've been actively seeking out newbies to watch on Twitch (whether they be the higher profile guys like Preach and Pyromancer and Nobbel or smaller streamers like Giltspire who streams it every Wednesday evening), and reaction videos on UA-cam purely because I've enjoyed seeing other people experience the story. I still enjoy the game and have a BUTTLOAD of things to do (especially since I'm juggling two characters on two DC's) but that has been a fun thing to do on the side while I play.
I quest alone - I recently established as solo-person FC - and when I see another sprouts in area and they're fighting mobs, I'll standby and I'll chip in the fight if they're struggling. Or doing FATE with them even if I have to level-sync down. It's very satisfying, and at the end of that, with customary /bow and what-not.
This is me 100%
Too true. Honestly, one of my favorite things to see people react to the first time is The Burn (Savage) in Stormblood. You know the one I'm talking about.
@@KelvinYong77 I do that at times as well simply because of that one person who stayed with me really early in the game when I was leveling the healer since they allowed me to hit the enemy once before one shotting it. It was a boring experience but I was quite happy due to the nice gesture.
its the closest thing to experiencing the best moments of the story for the first time again.
The part at the end "...I just like this, it makes me feel happy." That made me smile
I loved it so much
Every time I see a JoCat video it just shows how he truely is the most headpattable (Is that a word? Well now it is) youtuber there is.
He is like a cotton candy cloud, wrapped in chocolate. A walking cinamon roll of a character that you want to hug.
I need to punch a wall to feel manly again.
The most common question I’ve found myself asking more experienced players during the MSQ is “so when’s the next dungeon?” and I think you explained why that is very well
It’s called immaturity. One day if you’re lucky, you’ll learn to stop and smell the roses. To enjoy a game in full, and appreciate all of the work and care that goes into the minor details in between the larger set pieces. Stay in school
@@austins.2495 Or maybe people prefer different things. Sometimes I don't want a visual novel and I just want to play and do something challenging.
@@austins.2495 Or maybe I've stopped to smell the roses 200 times already and I just want to actually play the game? I get its a story driven MMO and there's 10 years + of content to catch up on. I totally get it. But at the end of the day, I did buy a game. The percentage of gameplay to story is way off to be enjoyable. I can't even play with friends until I hit a dungeon because even though we're sitting in a discord call, everyones quiet focusing on the story until they actually have a quest that requires you to play the game. For every 2 hours of story, there's about 30 minutes of actual gameplay. That's a terrible mix and the reason why a lot of new players burnout.
@@austins.2495 or maybe I want to play a massive multiplayer online game
@@gamewarrior9107 buddy that’s just a genre..
Jo knows how I feel about FF14. I had many of the same gripes. And since I started playing again this year I wanted to come at it with a better head and with Jo's help, I have been doing a lot better. And I am glad you made this video Jo, as I know you have been working on it for a long time. Thank you for sparking some love for it again.
Oh, right. I was coming into this game as someone entirely new to MMOs (basically didn't even know what they _were,_ and so certainly didn't have any genre biases going in), and as someone who liked/likes reading and was (and still is) very much into slow buildup-to-payoff arcs and extensive worldbuilding, no wonder I took to it so readily.
I had the exact same experience! I'd played a bunch of other FF games and loved them, but never braved an MMO before - and my god, am I glad I did
I wasn't exactly NEW to MMOs, but it was the first time I'd ever payed for one. My sister-in-law INSISTED I'd love it and, unfortunately, I dragged my heels on joining for a few years. It was only when she went and bought me ARR (and then proceeded to buy HW and StB for me while I was still in my first week of ARR) that I actually played. It was a case of, "...well, I have this game, and a month's sub, so I should probably play it..." and I did. And I loved it. I'm an avid reader and slow build-up/pay-off is INTERESTING to me. I love how everything, EVERYTHING wound up mattering in the end.
I love reading the text so much I check on NPCs that aren't the main quest goal just for more flavor. Sometimes they be like "uh what're you talking to me for?"
As a big One Piece Fan, FFXIV just kinda sucked me in immediately
My primary form of entertainment is novels and I was skipping 90% of the text and nothing in the game could grasp my attention at all. Almost every character really rubbed me the wrong way. Then one day I was bored and changed the language to Japanese, I wanted to see if there was any nuance being lost in translation. And what do you know, the characters are *completely* different.
I'm not sure who is in charge of the localisation but jesus christ they did a bang up job of it. Made near bloody everyone a walking poster for angst, conceit and passive aggressive twatism for seemingly no reason at all. Have not skipped a single line since swapping over, it's a whole different cast with so many little things. There's still a bunch of Japanese tropes I could have done without but at least they are what they are and aren't being painted over with the rooster strutting that was the entire English localisation
Hearing the passion as he's talking about this game's story, and that he had the same type of gripes that I do for the MSQ has actually given me the drive to at the very least watch a story recap video, (the one i've got pulled up is almost 4 hours long so hopefully it's good enough to hook me) if not go back and do NG+. So, thank you Jo, for potentially causing me to sink even *more* hours into this game than I already have lmao
I cannot agree more with the 'paying attention' part. Literally they'll pull out a detail that'll just make you jump out of your seat once you recognize it and it's such a rewarding feeling.
This MSQ is definitely worth all the the slow burn for me. Once you have the correct mindset playing it's well worth it. Of course just like Jo said, you can play this game in a multitude of ways, this game stands out so well on it's own with the MSQ or the gameplay alone.
Someone show Quinn this video.
Don't show Quinn this video, you need a longer attention span even for this.
This video is longer than Quinn actually played the game.
"I cannot agree more" not anynmore. That would mean you disagree. But I do agree that it is a neat thing they do.
@@delphidelion thank you English teacher I will fix
do you have any great examples of the story pulling out a detail in such a way that made you jump out of your seat? My problem with the MSQ is that having spent the last 6 months doing very little else (currently at patch 5.4) I can't tell if I've mentally checked out because of burn out or because it stopped hooking me. My excitement peaked at Heavensward and didn't return to HW levels until the 5.0 and 5.3 climaxes.
31:58 i feel like that's actually one of the biggest issues in the game that you touched upon earlier. So much of the game is effectively single player other than dungeons and trials. I really wish more of the game was co-op, such as being able to go into instanced story battles together, duty support dungeons together so you can take your time to read lore stuff, being able to team up to finish quests together. Etc etc. Like you said a lot of it will be your friend having to do the quests alone while you wait on the sideline until they reach the next dungeon or trial, then rinse and repeat.
I know it's a old video but I thought to give it a watch because my partner quit on one of those post ARR errand quests where Minfilia mentions that they are wasting your time with errands in the text box. Made them think "I really am wasting my time aren't I?" And quit. Trying to get them to get back for the free login event and got the reply "Nice try squenix, you can't trick me into wasting more time on pointless errand quests tho" which really sucks.
ARR had me burned out like 3 times before i pushed through. Stormblood too repelled me once or twice.
Sometimes, Eorzea tests your patience.
I quit once on ARR and once in Stormblood. I feel you bud
It took me until the middle of Stormblood to get me to enjoy playing through the story quests
Boy does it. Heck I'm only in the free trial(I started playing for real after the free trial got extended to include all of Heavensward)but I quit and started fresh cause my reason was real life related and a(metaphorical) seed of doubt got planted in my mindset but thanks to my friends I deleted my character in Diablos cause it reminded me of what happened irl and started fresh in Faerie where they all were and I actually felt motivated to play it again and I'm gonna be looking into getting a subscription later on when I'm able.
Same here. I’m on my FOURTH attempt at trying to complete Arr. It’s not going well
@@FightOstinFight I admire your persistence, but honestly, if you're just not feeling the story and/or combat, that's totally ok. I love this game with my whole heart, it's my favorite of all time, but I will readily admit that the beginning is rough. I hate when people say, "It gets good once you get to 2.4/2.5, then way better in Heavensward!" Not a good way to sell the game or keep struggling newer players interested. At least you can say that you gave it a shot! Don't make yourself miserable; move on to other games.
I will say: the bit about "take your time with the msq" is so very important. I have been playing the game for roughly 6 months now, and I'm still in the post-patch content for stormblood. I have often taken week or even month-long breaks from doing any msq content. Enjoy it at your own pace, it will make things so much better. This game is a marathon, not a sprint.
Me 2 years in only post patch Stormblood too lmao there's so much fun to be had in 14
I finished Shadowbringer only a couple weeks after Endwalker released but have ignored the new expansion in favour of lvling professions and checking out old raids. The Ruby Weapon quest (extreme trial series ShB) and onward story must be some of the best I've played in the game so far.
Any game that requires that many hours to 'enjoy' it is a poorly made game. The writing of FF14 is atrocious.
@@VictoriousLoL any games that make you enjoy the game for so long must be made right.
@@k.vn.k Except the entire video is talking about how it took JoCat 300 hours to enjoy FF14. That isn't made right. Hell, if I don't enjoy a game in the first 3 hours, I refund it or stop playing it, because if something can't grab me in the same time it takes me to watch a movie, it's doing something wrong.
Isn't that called Stockholm syndrome?
Fun fact: Stockholm syndrome is not an actual thing and originated from a hostage situation in (who woulda guessed) Stockholm. The hostages were not willing to testify against their captors in court, which led to the police psychologist Nils Bejerot to coin the term.
In actuality the reason was more probable to have been the polices major incompetence as well as the hostage takers being nice to the hostages, one of the hostages literally said afterwards that their captors had been more competent than the police.
That‘s not a very good look for the police though, so they made a psychologist explain why this happened without blaming the polices incompetence.
The more you know
@@gama2064 Yes I know. It is still a phrase in the English language with a defined meaning that can be applied here.
It was so fun watching your love for the game grow over time and see you reach the end. I love this style of video btw. I have been missing them!
The jocat video essays are underrated gems. Several times I have gone back to watch his one on klanoa 2 just because it a fun watch.
This kills me because this is basically how I felt about the Secret World, but that's kinda long dead at this point. Guess I'll give FF14 a try.
Same Secret world was a Game I wanted to Love. I bought the original day 1 way back when it first came out cause the concept sounded awesome. But the gameplay was so bad, I couldn't get past Area 2 cause even with all the 'Top Gear' I could get from the raid, bosses, and quests, the enemies were just too powerful and took too long to beat. And Area 3, was the same. Never made it to Area 4, ever, in all my years of player. And by 'Area', I do mean 'AREA', not as in, the 4th arch or 4th chapter, I mean in the very beginning area at the start of the game, going to the 'Exist' to the next zone on the same island. I only ever made it to Zone 4 Max, out of playing the game on and off over the years.
Which is sad, cause I WANT to experience the game and the Lore and quests. But holy shit the Combat and 'MMO Mechanics' is too fucking hard to enjoy. It's like trying to Solo a Raid in Wow, but it's just the the basic 'normal map' and not even the raid yet.
i left Warframe for FFXIV, I heavily recommend it, don't rush your enjoyment of it. They are allowing people to make accounts again.
That's actually a really great comparison (and sad that it's so apt, too). The Secret World had SUCH a great story, but even reincarnated as Secret World Legends, you had to fight against the MMO mechanics to get to the juicy story nuggets. And sometimes, that fight was just too much. 🙁
I hope you have better fortunes in FFXIV!
From 12:09 to 12:15, I love the adorable art of Jocat being romanced by MSQ-Chan and introducing him to her friends!
The Heavensward girl reminds me of Ysale.
Damn it, now I'm sad.
This is literally exactly what happened to me. Started out loving the crafting and other progression, but started getting really bogged down trying to get through MSQ to unlock things. Near the end of ARR I just kinda gave up and stopped playing. Halfway through watching this video I started the game up again and I'm gonna try to follow the advice here... hopefully it works, because I really think I could love this game and its community if I could just get into the groove. So ... I think I gotta go practice my imperial salute or something? Wish me luck.
Hey, so if you do end up loving it and have the time/ever want to respond to a comment, lemme know if you enjoy it, I’d like to know. 🙂
As someone who has tried to play ffxiv since it first came out on PS3 , December just gone me and a mate said "screw it we will commit till we enjoy it". ARR does suck but it sets up so much, just finishing heavensward it's not a game changer but all the other things you can do outside the msq while making your way through it is a blast. By time I got my character to level 50 , which I had done while I still had like 30 quests left in ARR I was hooked. Give it time, really commit if you can and you'll eventually see why it's so recommended
Forge ahead.
Totally with you. The MSQ made me quit. I simply couldn't bear being forced to watch Mary Sues talk to each other while *my* character nodded and nodded and nodded and agreed to do stuff I didn't want to do.
@@zomgl2pnoobffs Hearing the word Mary Sue used to describe characters in FF14 makes me want to punch you, but I understand you are still in the ignorance of ARR, so I shall refrain.
Playing through ARR again recently I realized the MSQ is like a skeleton of just the basic plot. I found a ton of cool stuff by talking to the optional NPC's in the Waking Sands between quests. Things you wouldn't ever expect like an origin story for Arenvald's silver armor lol. Those have been filling out the story and making it feel much less like a saturday morning cartoon where the primal of the week gets slain by the one person immune to them.
I appreciate the video, I'm 60 hours into MSQ as a new player and its awful, I hate the game a lot right now. "It gets better" has been the most dismissive and crushing thing to hear, the early game content is not good at all and its an absolute job to get through it. Charging me over half the cost of Endwalker to skip is a maliciously predatory practice and they know exactly what they're doing. I'm struggling to even open the game to finish Heavensward atm. Giant maps with no players and no content, just auto-running from point A to point B on a slow bird all alone. Compelling stuff..
This just goes to show that, when you recommend the game, you don't have to tell the person anything about the game being good at X amount of hours or when you reach a certain point. All you have to do, is let the person know that the game is STORY heavy, and have REALLY BIG EMPHASIS in story so paying attention to it is crucial. It's an RPG first (JRPG to be exact), MMO second. If its it doesn't tickle their kinks after trying it out, they can put down the game and try other ones as the game won't go away anytime soon.
I had a friend who was into FPS and MOBAs and has no care about the lore in the games he played because he's just not interested in it. He never played JRPGs or Western RPGs. He was my room mate, he saw me play this game from hours to end (I have 700+ days total playtime, YES I WAS THIS ADDICTED TO THE GAME) and he was curious as to why I was having so much fun in the game while he doesn't find the same amount of fun anymore in MOBAs and FPS games. He tried the game with me and he was starting to burn out around the post ARR patch that involves the Sahagin before the big fight and the last straw were the Sylphs *(I still remember the questlines that were removed involving these beast tribes because I played them and they are really tedious so I understand why it was removed even though it provides more lore context why we need to do what we need to do or why the thing happened)*. I never pushed him to slog thru and just told him to take it easy, slow or put the game down if he starts getting frustrated. Part of it is him trying to understand why the game is so fun to me, and similar to you, he feels like he is missing out. So he took a 4 month break, went back to the old games he played and then one day he asked me if I can play with him, this time I said, "Ok, if were gonna do this, then let's go all the way. I'll create an alt and I'll start over and catch up to you" To which he replied, "No, I'll delete my character, it didn't have anything special in it anyway and we'll start together."
Then I started to tell him to take the game slow, read the main quests because me and the game is not going anywhere. Needless to say, he followed my advise. 2 years later, he is now a Triple Legend (which is something I didn't accomplish since I am not a hardcore raider but an omnicrafter) and fell so in love with the game that he keeps recommending it to some of his friends whenever he is asked of games he would want to recommend and is excited play with them so that he can see their reactions to certain points of the quests. He was even the one that started to convince me to get into Savage Raids because he was having so much fun. Played Endwalker together and he kept messaging me that this game is something he really treasures and thanked my patience to go thru the entire game again with him even though I already have a max level character way back in Heavensward.
Also, additional note after getting hooked in this game, whenever he wants to take a break from the game, he tries out any RPG he can find, even the RPGs in the PS1 and SNES era, as he fell down the rabbit hole that is RPGs. He loves Witcher, Legend of Zelda and FFIV (to him it was the best FF game next to FFXIV) because it resonated with him having a brother that felt distant, yet always there when he needed him most. So whenever the topic of him being an RPG nut, from being an FPS and MOBA fiend, I always get the blame. KEKW
P.S. English is my second language so I hope I did not misspoke. LUL
Your english is flawless. I had no idea it wasn't your first language until you said so.
Conversely, I fell in love with FF14 almost instantly, and feel immense disappointment in the fact I can't afford a subscription.
But maybe there's something in this video that can help me enjoy FF14 even more than I already do, so we'll see what I think after I watch the video.
Edit: I might play FF14 again, despite not being able to progress anymore.
I feel this so hard. Being poor sucks
Man I feel this except I can't play it in general cuz I don't have anything to play it on what I would give in order to finally play this game
This is absolutely an excuse to try out more of what the game has to offer, even in the free trial.
I have some friends who embarked on the craft/gather everything themselves route, who we brought along to do the high end trials/raids of ARR with, heck even one who became a collect-aholic when he realized his old obsession: FF8's card game Triple Triad, was basically all here too.
Caveat being that it helps to have some friends one linkshell call away, but there's still plenty of other optional non-MSQ content to mess around with.
@@AxiamWolfe
I have milked the free trial already, and it is bone dry.
Time to work a bit, its definitely worth it.
Also you are not forced to sub every single month, i personally unsub everytime i play
Mans really just said "the real content is the friends we made along the way" lmao
My main annoyance was that people with linkpearls still needed you to go to them and talk to them in person only to send you away again. Or instead of using their linkpearl to talk to another person with a linkpearl they send you...
But then how will I know if this is Thancred? 🙃
They explain that, linkpearls can be intercepted, so the important secret stuff need to be said in person. Heck, your linkpearl is hacked during Praetorium so that red power ranger can have a discussion with his former crush!
That's why they use the linkpearl mostly to tell you to go to HQ so that they can relay to you information.
While I agree for some of it, magical wire taps exist.
@@NibelungJ Still feels like a retroactive justfication for a real problem with their game design. Like not putting a teleporter crystal in Vesper Bay.
@@Healermain15 It's not retroactive, as I said, your linkpearl DO get hacked at some point in the 2.0 MSQ, justifying the need of communicate sensitive things in person.
The minifilia joke about not being a character was hilarious. Personally, I was totally desensitized to doing time wasting quests, so I had no issue with the slow burn of the MSQ, but I definitely understand whenever one of my friends plays and they complain bitterly about all the parts of the MSQ that waste time.
I've been primed to try this game out thanks to you. Now that I'm actually playing it, I'm having an absolute blast. I think that, having watched the video in the past has massively influenced me to actually enjoy the early game. I'm sitting at level 35 right now and its a lot of fun to just do stuff at my own pace. And yes, I level up every crafting and gathering job that is not fisher while also just doing my dragoon/archer stuff on the side.
I've started the game alongside friends. They are not enjoying their time with the story at all, to the point where I'm like: Where have I heard this before?
TLDR; forwarded this video to them and I'ma gonna re listen to this as well again now. Thanks for this one chief.
I was invested since ARR. Helped me through quarantine at thr start of pandemic. Did take a break at lqte heavensward since most of my friends were also taking a break and resumed last year.
Ff14 helped me through depression actually and it is one on the top games for me.
Can I just say that I LOVE how heartily you recommended Hildibrand content without giving potential players even the smallest hint about what they're getting in for. I mean that sincerely, I think it's brilliant. I think you can enjoy it TONS knowing what it is, but oh god, going in blind? You are just NOT expecting the game to take that kind of turn.
Great video! Even as someone who already loves it, and didn't have the same problems. I'll definitely recommend this video to people trying to get into the game if they have these issues.
I didn't enjoy the Hildibrand stuff personally, but like all things, it's hit or miss.
I personally haven’t always liked the Hildi quests but it’s been so exciting to watch so many streamers get hooked for good on 14 by doing those quests. They are truly unique and so very very absurd!
Well this just makes me even more curious and confused about hildibrand
@@FFKonoko Hildi does that to a lot of people.
I love Hildi, and want him in the Endwalker stuff. I missed him in Shadowbringers.
The XIV litmus test: if you don't like to read, fuck off. Or pay the story skip, but don't complain that you don't like to read, because it's not made for you. It doesn't need to be. I would argue that any one MMO does not need to, and should not ever, appeal to everyone. I will say that if unlike JoCat you do not find yourself any closer to seeing what makes XIV the best MMO, do not force it or try to change XIV. Go do something else.
THIS. HONESTLY THIS. People aren't obligated to like things. And its not a bad thing to stop doing something you obviously dont like.
This video explains EXACTLY how I feel about the game. I love everything about the game, EXCEPT the MSQ fetch quests. I think I need to try and look at it at a different angle… One of my biggest gripes with games like this (not limited to MMOs) is watching my friends with a whoooole lot more free time than I do learn, grow and accomplish a lot of things. Leads to the friends essentially carrying me through the game and eliminating the challenge to a lot of raids. That said, I think I might just get back into the groove and I have you to thank JoCat.
Thank you :3
could always set it to min ilvl no echo and suddenly the challenge is back
The fetch quests are a pain and made me really miss the feature in City of Heroes where you could simply call the quest giver to hand in a quest and get a new one without having to traipse back (which wasn't as bad of an experience anyway as you could just fly or super jump or super speed back).
"This is happening, it makes me happy" That is a bloody mood!
I squeed irl and my heart danced. I, one day, hope to see jocat at a panel with their hair styled into ears with the ribbon. Just. Perfect.
He's a good noodle and should be happy
“Im not to sure, I play other games n mmos, dunno if I have time for this one too” “you can play as a cat girl” “im in” basically how it went for me
Basically me (though I don't usually like mmos, mostly prefer singleplayer games) but replace "catgirl" with "catboy" and then I fell in love with the story.
Bruh literally what got me to play. All I heard was cat girl. And now I can’t seem to not play this.
Replace catgirl with “I saw someone holding a scythe” and you have me at the moment, strongly considering buying the game just for that because scythes are my weakness.
Some people are so focused on the “MMO” part that they forget the “RPG” part of the full genra name. Nothing wrong with that, but it is something to consiter.
genre* and consider* stay in school kid, you’ll get there.
I've had to come to terms with 14 in seeing it mainly as a single player RPG with some multiplayer elements.
@@austins.2495 You're the idiot. Not everyone has English as their first language.
@@austins.2495 Man you're a stain.
36:55 I feel like this is one of the most important things, taking your time with the MSQ. It's designed to be a slow burn, and it's worth keeping in mind that all this content has been released over the span of a decade. Sometimes the MSQ's momentum is high, sometimes it's low, and that's a very deliberate thing. Don't binge for sake of getting to something later, play at whatever pace feels natural, taking things at the pace that feels right in the moment. There's no shortage of non-MSQ things to do when the momentum of MSQ is at a low point, and in many ways the game actually expects you to take these breaks from the MSQ, as part of how it loosely establishes gaps in time in an immersive fashion.
Thats the important take away. At the same time there's so much motivation from the playerbase, and the game itself that incentivises progressing to "the better parts of the game", meaningful story pay offs, and in game rewards.
Well this slow burn is the be all end all of slow burns. It’s really really really fucking slow
Msq is a huge, obligatory waste of time and I absolutely despise it. The curse of playing the game now that everything's out is that you either have to play for 2 years to unlock all the content gated behind msq or straight out pay for it. The only way I'd be ok with it is if I can "trigger" the dialogue and go about my business as an addon reads it to me & cutscenes playing in the corner of my screen. It is not a slow burn, it is a video of a fireplace playing on loop.
@@aliceblack3533 i think thats sort of a you problem? Because thats how the game is? Theres a very heavy emphasis on story in ffxiv. And if it isnt drawin ya in then i suggest hoping ship to another mmo. Cos this game really just aint for you if you really dont like the msqs and i say this in the nicest way possible. Because the reason it burns so slow is because you cant just expect your character to be legendary warrior of light right of the bat.
@@aliceblack3533 it’s a video of a fireplace where people talk about stuff and your “character” nods occasionally and then runs off to do whatever it is that they said to do.
ffxiv is the ultimate Stockholm syndrome the game
I feel like a weird outlier for the fact that I was almost immediately invested in the story and the lore of the world right from the get-go in ARR, which started with my character actually FEELING like a character in the story instead of just an empty avatar and having a race that appealed to me on a spiritual level (Au Ra) helped with that further.
I wanted to know more about mysterious folk like Hydaelyn and the Ascians and about locales that were mentioned off-hand like Ala Mhigo, Othard and Thavnair and it was just little teases like that kept me motivated to keep pushing forward. I'd constantly speculate about what was coming next in the story, and more often then not there were enough clues strewn about that I was able to make fairly accurate guesses, even for some of the more...outlandish twists like those introduced in ShB and EW.
I agree that most of the actual quests in the MSQ are pretty dull gameplaywise, but the little bits of world building scattered about even in the random sidequests managed to hold my attention all the way through.
aye, I always enjoyed the low level, humbling experience of classic wow and so ARR hooked me from the jump (although I totally agree with Jo way more of its MSQ should be moved into side quests)
Yeah, I think the persistent comments of "getting to the good parts" was a bit of a flag. I get that it's like being told you have to finish reading this book to get a prize but the book itself is what most people love. Missing the forest for the trees big time.
I'd like to understand how a Yes-Man can be considered a "character".
@@5chneemensch138 The DRK job quest line is for you then. It's definitely there for those who don't match the intended "Goku" like character which the story is mostly written for; those who simply strive for adventure for adventures' sake. The expanded dialog options given in later expansions also helps give some breathing room as well.
@@DrunkCat1337 Dialog options? Do you mean as in option options like a CRPG or as in "yes, but actually no" like in Persona 5?
A non-reactive character that just stands there like a corpse like in almost all calssic MMOs is way more of a character than a character that reacts outside of your control and is mute. Code Vein gave me an aneurism for that exact reason.
I _really_ want to like FF14, but the game actively tries to push me away from it at every opportunity. Last time I logged on I was close to Heavensward, at lvl 58, Ninja.
Im more with Asmongold on this, ARR was amazing and it grabbed me more and more. Sure there were slow luls and repetativeness that made me take a break for a few hours and come back. But I love a good story, story is my jam in games and MMOs too apparently. As someone who spent 17 years on Wow /cough I can appreciate a good story in an MMO..which WoW was not for most of its lifespan.
JoCat sounds to me like he isnt a story person, and thats ok. But then, he should've known beforehand the game is very story focused and thats the bees knees of the game. A 'main linear questline' to follow in an MMO should frankly be standard and the story actually good, like ff14 demonstrates. It should be a journey, a slow burn. I personally took 7 long months to go from ARR to Shadowbringrs 5.3 at the time and I had the best time in my life since playing Vanilla WoW all those many years ago. To really immerse myself in the universe, to craft and level (too many) jobs at the time to try out, gathering jobs, Anima HW Dark Knight sword questline that I really wanted to do to look like an awesome DRK when I was playing through ShB, I took my time and enjoyed it... It did help ALITTLE bit that when I started playing In feb 2020 the pandemic was in full swing and my job stopped being a thing for a few months so lol :( but yeah.
You can actually see the great potential of Ishikawa's writing from the Rogue Guild's quest. It just feels so different, stylish and fresh compared to other ARR stuffs.
For me I was skipping most dialogue and cutscenes until I got to Coerthas around lvl 35-40 IIRC. One of the characters mentioned a dragon sex cult and I was like... wait... I should pay attention now. That story about the heretics and the Inquisition hooked me good. I still hated most of the post 2.0 patch quests, but I diligently read through them all anyway, and when it came time for Heavensward, my understanding of the characters and the stakes made everything that much better. I agree that the quests themselves still aren't great, but the characters and the payoffs make it all worthwhile. Oh and the Extreme trials are a ton of fun and made me realize that progression raiding with randoms was a thing in this MMO, unlike some others.
I have really been considering getting into this game lately, actually after I watched a supercut vod you uploaded. This has pushed me more into the mood of getting it, thank you. Now I just need some people to play with.
I play this game p much loner and I can tell you that you don't need friends for this game. I bet it makes it better for some peeps but it's not needed to enjoy the game. I've managed to even get the HW extreme mounts aka the firebird mount p much without adding anyone to my friendslist
If you are someone like me who almost exclusively played single player games, you can progress through the game just fine by yourself. You can even do what I did and find a (safe) streamer fc and use them as a resource for progressing though the game (fc buffs are amazing, and even basic food will give you a 3% xp buff)
I went into it as a loner. I experienced the main story quests alone. And I really liked it that way. But one day I was invited into a random free company (guild), and for some reason decided to accept even though social gaming wasn't for me. Now it's been a few years, we've had our highs and lows, and we still play together, not only Final Fantasy, but pretty much anything we feel like trying out. I'm now part of a decently sized community that feels like a family, even though I went into FFXIV with the sole intention of playing an MMORPG by myself. So don't wait for people to play with. Go out there, get a feeling for the game, and if you enjoy it, maybe find a small community of your own. =)
People are also really friendly, you may find you make yourself friends through the silliest things, and it's lovely!
this video actually made me start playing FFXIV and I just reached shadowbringers...
At the end there and with my... Sort of passing into "veterancy"... I can 100% agree with the "Veterans love watching new players experience the story" because all the reactions of friends who've started playing are priceless through all the ups and downs of the story in the game.
And, well, listening to their reaction when they find the Hildibrand questline is just flawless every time.
I just got to the gator family. And when i read that my cmpanions where equaly annoyd as me i really had to chuckel thinking about the laundry that would await.
I was actually kinda worried you werent joking that much. Turned out to be a rather nice quest actually.
another thing they do sometimes that I really like, is a questgiver will give you a list of like, 3 chores that they want you to do, but then the characters with you will actually split up and do two of them so you only have to do one.
What is it a reference to anyway, I assume something regarding Ill Meg.
@@millis6054I forgor....
No joke, i no longer know.
All those I had no fun untill hundret hours in talk is complete bullshit. If you didnt enjoy anything you wouldnt do it for 300 hours. What you mean is it has its peak after 300hours for you maybe.
Just wanted to thank you for this video, ever since I started paying more attention to the story my enjoyment of FF14 has skyrocketed.
I really appreciate what Jocat said starting at 14:04. I am one of those people who thought the story was great all the way through, But I have gotten hostility online when I say that I like ARR. It's fine to not like ARR, but don't get angry at people who do
20:11 Exactly right. I started out ARR role playing my character. This might actually explain why I loved ARR so much I wasn't there to get through the story ASAP. I was there to be my character
I feel you I'm one that likes SB over all the expansions even EW.
Yeah I'm not past Heavensward yet and I'll admit the writing is much tighter but like...ARR had so much to establish? It drags a bit at points, but they spend a lot of time establishing the world, the stakes, and the characters. I really do like ARR and its a shame people consider so awful, it just had a different job to do is all.
This is still one of my all time favourite FFXIV videos to revisit every couple of months just to go through the butterflies of finding and falling for this game all over again
Lol same, sometimes during my hour lunches at work 🤣
"It has handsome elf men"
Yeah... one of my friends simps for Aymeric, another simps for Estinien
And I'm just sitting here like: "I think Lucia would be an amazing partner, she loyal!"
She's technically *not* loyal, she's more an excellent judge of character. If she was loyal
obv spoilers ahead
She'd still be a Garlean Spy.
@@Avengedtenfold well she is loyal
She’s loyal to aymeric
She even says directly that she told him everything and he welcomed her regardless, and that she won’t hold herself responsible for or complacent to her sister’s choices
Imo loyalty to your true calling takes precedence over loyalty to your origin
Go team Aymeric!
slight spoiler
Lucia is my favorite Garlean.
Nero and Cid share second place, partially because the idea of them sharing -anything- is hilarious to my mind.
Aymeric is best elf though, no question.
As for Estinian, ever since he and Ysayle met face to face I thought "they'd make a great couple".
Now I'm a straight white male, and I'm not sexually attracted to any of the hot elf men personally.
But FFXIV is a very immersive game, and I play a young-adult elf bachelorette. And anyone who gets between me and a loving marriage with Aymeric will not survive to regret it.
This is art. I've been searching for a game to suck up my free time *and depression* and this convinced me to try FF14. This is a great primer for what the game is about and how it's not wrong to dislike parts.
Ah man this game will be perfect for you
FF14 healed or relieved a lot of people's depression. Just try to read as much as you can. There is not much fun combat in the first 60 levels. But the story, and Gold Saucer can eat up all your personal time lol.
37:49- My brother-in-law had me skip the cutscene before the vault dungeon in heavensward, and I would say whole-heartedly I missed out on something extremely important.
Looking back on this, it's so sad that we won't be getting anymore wholesome content like this from him. Thanks internet. >:/
I agree. I love this guy. It's bullshit what happened.
What happened?
@@blubblurb he made a funny song. and the internet being the cesspool that it is didnt like that.
I think I'm odd. I loved FFXIV's questline. I loved the story, EVEN ARR. Maybe it's cause I was and am a book nerd, so the book-like feel of the slow burn story really resonated with me. . . . I also am someone who likes LotR book version and even own the collectors edition, so my tolerance for 'standing around talking' is pretty damn high.
But I'm still at a point where I wish I could like this game more, and its all because of my friends, especially my boyfriend. They rushed me. A lot. I barely remember Stormblood because I blitz though it then quit the game. I came back for Shadowbringers and Endwalker--and those are my favorite expansions hands down--but the rush was just.
My boyfriend wanted to raid, and wanted all his friends to raid. End content, first month release. So every time I wanted go off an do a side quest, I'd be told to do MSQ. Want to do crafting, do MSQ. Want to try the minigames, do MSQ. It. . . killed the game for me, for a story rushed is no story at all--and I love all the side content. I don't like combat, and grinding, and raiding--I'd rather spend 50 hours in the Gold Saucer racing chocobos.
I guess I'm somewhat venting, but people, don't let anyone rush you through this game. Go at your pace, deviate as you want, and it'll be a LOT better.
What a horrible experience you got. For me, i keep deviating from the MSQ because of the side contents like crafting, obtaining relic weapons, leveling other jobs, side stories. My god, playing on a character then experiencing all the jobs is an amazing treat for me.
Don't get me wrong i love doing MSQ. There are multiple times that I got teary-eyed because of the narrative and I'm a 34 y/o guy.
this is what killed it for me as well but in a different way, didn't have as much time as my friends and i wanted to be doing content with them so i kind of forced myself to rush to keep up, and i burned myself out as a result cause i realized at one point no matter how hard i tried i just could not keep up.
Phoenix, Cyber, I know it's not something that is usually recommended for FFXIV (in fact, many, MANY people say not to, but I COMPLETELY disagree with them), but I'd honestly advise an alt in a different world than the people that rushed you. Come up with a backstory that relates to the world. Keep that backstory in mind as you create your alt. Once you're in, actively go look for an FC in that world (there are usually plenty advertising), join their discord if they have one. Don't rush to catch up with your new FC mates as, more likely than not, they'll want you to take your time and would be more than happy to help you out with content and just hang out while you do stuff. Take your time. Play the game following the personality of your alt WoL.
I love my main, but when I get bored playing on him (he's got nothing to do but levelling and roulettes right now, lol), I jump to one of my MANY alts with their various backgrounds and different personalities and just... play one of them. My main is a laid-back dude who was born in Doma but fled for Eorzea with his pregnant mother and two bodyguards when he was a child. I also have a quiet, yet sassy cat girl, my main's Super Serious baby brother (who was born in Eorzea), a super shy healer Au Ra healer who's emotionally fragile (and THAT'S super fun to imagine the backlash for when the person she has a HUGE crush on gets nuked saving her butt, and I even have personal story beats for that, such as a MASSIVE shift in focus on party roles), a mischievous Viera girl with self-esteem issues, and quite a few others, just because I enjoy imagining the story from the perspective of different personalities and races.
Point I'm making is, if your experience on your main has been ruined, start fresh. Still play your main, still hang out with your friends, but have a side character somewhere away from the people that damaged your original experience and make it all new. Play how you want, when you want. Enjoy the main story, side stories, mini-games and the rest of the content at your leisure with no rush. Maybe just sit in the city-state with the most active social life (for me, who mostly lives on Coeurl over in Crystal DC, that's Limsa Lominsa with Gridania as a secondary location) and just... talk to other players. Listen to a bard for a while and chill. No limits, no rules, as long as you aren't a jerk to other players (though if it's the personality of your character, feel free to be a jerk to NPCs. lol). :)
Hell, there are other ways to spice up your playing, too. For example, if you have a healer (or Red Mage with Verraise), write up a raise macro message to display your character's personality. For instance, one of my main's macros is, "No dirt naps on my watch! Up you get, (player name)!" You can also write macros that alter the message your emotes put in chat. I don't know how to do that myself, but I've seen it done and I think it's a cute way to add personality to your personal WoL.
And oh, hell, I just realized how long this message has gotten. I think FFXIV's wordiness has affected me. lmao
mmm, as more of a story and world-building nerd - I felt a bit nostalgic for the cut bits of ARR that had the WoL go through more of the world...
Jocat: Or just sit and listen as you do your dailies, I've been told I have a nice voice
Me: Stop calling me out Jocat
I guess I'm the target audience for FFXIV. I love story, and I've really enjoyed playing through ARR reading and watching everything. I talk to everyone who is able to be talked to when I'm in an area, because often their dialogue changes depending on where you're at in the MSQ, and it enriches the story. I even went back and did the side quests with an alt job because I didn't want to miss them. It feels like I'm a character in a book, which is really cool. And I get to take breaks to go kill stuff with other people! It probably did help that I played through most of it with a friend doing the same quests at the same time, so it was a shared experience, with commentary.
My only gripe is actually that the XP boost is a bit much. I'm way overleveled unless I want to do like 3 alt jobs. I can't complain too much though since I also remember when we didn't have it and the incredible slog that was at times.
Tbf I did come from the incredible grind that was Chinese and Korean MMOs. They have story, but most of the gameplay is killing thousands of mobs over and over. I'm still thrilled that quest drops are 100%
That ending made me smile so much 💖 that blushing fun is exactly how I felt when I used my free fantasia to change from hyur to fem-roe. Love that you embrace it you wonderful cat-boy!
And I'm so glad you loved the Hildebrand quests. They seem to be very love/hate but I enjoyed them very much too.
I must be really weird, I actually super enjoyed ARR and read through all the dialogue and everything. It's like equal to HW for me, even stormblood almost (just got to shb so can't judge that yet!)
What did you think of shb?
I'm 63, a retired college English professor, so getting deep into a piece of literature is a big part of who I am. To me, the action and fighting in a story are just necessary evils. I can say without reservation that the best way to get through the early game grind is to go slowly, read everything, watch all the cut scenes, do all the side quests, and just grind it out. Join a good Free Company and make friends to help you complete dungeons. In short, playing FF14 is like reading a multi-volume novel, not watching a 90-minute movie. Be patient. Learn the lore. Every quest teaches you something that you will find useful later in the game, though it might not seem that way at the time. The payoff is in knowing, really knowing, what's going on and who's involved.
This game single handedly taught me the virtue of patience. Sometimes learning to walk instead of running through life in general... You start paying attention to the things around you. It really does.
I feel like I actually would defend the "run in a straight line from one part of said spoiler area and back again a few times over a course of an hour or so" simply because if it were just cutscenes back to back to back, it would be overwhelming. Like, the downtime in moments like that lets you process or think/talk about what's going on so it doesn't just turn into channel surfing at 4 a.m. without really paying attention.
"after turning in this quest several cutscenes will play in sequence"
Theres gotta be a better solution than making the the travel extra boring, so the cut scenes feel comparatively less boring. It's like adding dirt to your porrige in hopes it will make the oats taste sweeter.
@@kodaxmax I'm not saying that it makes the cutscenes "less boring" I'm saying it's the difference between speed eating and having a normal meal. The space between gives things a moment to breathe.
@@writer747 Don't worry the cutscenes with any sort of weight to them already space themselves out with hours of meaningless drivel (whoops I meant setup). The msq is a visual novel, having to teleport/auto-run/watch a progression bar/kill 5 piss easy mobs in between adds nothing.
@@Malcadork I'm not going to touch the amount of oof in that comment.
23:36 THIS. This makes me think about how EW [spoiler]
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brought up the 7th Umbral Calamity and how it wiped people’s memories, and how big a point it is for EW’s narrative. People will mostly forget that this is mention at the very beginning of ARR when we first arrived at the major cities.
bro i only read the first sentence but give a spoiler warning! Jesus. Thanks for ruining that story beat
@@25cats oh sorry about that. Will add after the cmt. Since the EW spoiler gate is lifted I wasn’t thinking to add warning. 7th Umbral Calamity wiping memories is mentioned in ARR so I don’t see this part is spoiler…At least you still have to discover how that point is related to EW at least? 😅 I don’t think anyone can guess without the context provided by EW anyway.
@@SoSakashii oh nvm, im totally on the wrong side here. My brain immediately activated the spoiler sensors for some reason and i misread everything. Sorry about that!!
I'm really curious, I don't recall those references in EW. Could you point out the point the 7th calamity comes up for me?
@@quin5805 When Scholarch Montichaigne lectured us about the nature of aether, soul, memory etc
Yeah, I felt that way about ARR and HW, too. There'd be a burst of phenomenal story elements, then it would crash back down. Plus, when your open world is...well...a barren desert of roaming content without any useful discoverability, it makes those fetch and chat quests just...terrible.
I feel like the odd one out cause I immediately loved the story and world building. By the end of ARR I did feel burned out ngl but the lore kept me going. I think it’s cause I love writing and making my own characters so I love experiencing world building and character development.
Same here. The game had me hooked from the beginning. I was annoyed by how long ARR was, but the story and the lore was more better
I was in a similar seat, thought I was lucky enough to have friends pushing me about.
But I remember the exact moment I fell in love, I was gonna do the Shiva trial for the first time ever and thought the music was very pretty... Then everyone got frozen and it got all quiet, the finger snap happened and suddenly the punk rock ballad starts playing and I get goose bumps all over my skin. That was when I truly realised why my friends love this game so much.
I'm not suprised that it was a song that finally really got me into the game, whenever I get interested in something it's usually related to some music I heard from said thing.
I gotta appreciate that Jocat gives attribution for everything. Thanks for all the work you do dude.
I'm a reader by nature and I devoured every last bit of XIV's story and even the quests. Yes, even the subquests. Some of those tell very interesting little stories or add just a bit more character to the zone or give a bit of trivia that you would have never known otherwise. To have it ALL come back and be important in Endwalker was just mindblowing.
I am like this too. I talk to npcs when they are gathered, even if they didn't have a quest to give, I would legit want to know more about the world and its people, and I always appreaciated what they shared, speciallly my fav npcs.
Thanks Jocat. A few of my friends recently got REALLY invested into FFXIV so I decided to join them, but ultimately ran into the same issues as you with ARR. I made it about halfway through trudging through the MSQ until I ultimately lost steam and gave up trying to get to the "good part" after about 30 hours of playtime while the rest of them got through Heavensward and are now well on their way through Shadowbringers.
After watching this, hopefully I can give this game another chance with a new mindset, and not skip through all the dialogue this time. Wish me and my tiny conjurer "The Chris" luck!
[EDIT 2023]: I got through Ifrit and gave the game another break, but by now I realized I don't really like the gameplay of being a White Mage. So I'm now having a way easier and more fun time as my tiny Summoner "The Chris"
I was trying out the game and skipping through all dialogues and cutscenes because I saw them as a waste of time, and as a creator that I value the opinnion of, I remembered you had a video on this topic, watched it entirely, and now I'm having way more fun with the game.
Thanks catman ^^
The roleplaying part at the end of part 2 makes me feel, to synthesize it, that most stories, especially MMO stories, tell you why this or that NPC matter. XIV builds up over the course of many irrelevant moments and characters why -you- matter
It's taken me a while to get around to watching this video but I'm glad I finally did.
Definitely one of your best videos you've made and I'm looking forward to content like this in the future.
(Although, I guess a video about hundreds of hours of play might be just a bit hard to make a few of)
Heads up to people WHO REALLY Like the story? Please do not buy story skips and watch them? Theres ALOT of stuff the cutscenes dont cover. The little interactions between characters, the banter between your scion pals.
I always read what the npcs have to say EVEN if i dont have to talk to them. Youd be surprised how much you can learn by just reading the one or two lines the idle npcs have. Hell alot of them made me laugh. Some made me sad.
(A LITTLE BIT OF AN ARR spoiler? But the very first dungeon you do. You meet a trio of adventurers bummed that didn't get to the dungeon that you did but they get even more hyped to tackle their next endeavour. Literally at the entrance of the next dungeon if you talk to one of the npcs (THAT ACTUALLY END UP BECOMING SCIONS BTW) report that they fucking died. Proof of this is that they even show up in POTD.
And thats ONE out of the MANY string of in world things going on. As jocat said its subjective but the game does a great job putting you into your characters shoes IF youre willing to let it do so. I dont think ive ever felt a game that made me have to work with it in sync and that made me feel more engaged?
The game and yoshi p constantly says to take your time and i never understood what that meant until i just... Started being my character. Im in Shadowbringers right now and let me tell you. The feeling you get when you remember what your character used to be in ARR.. Its an amazing one. To see how far youve come.
I seem to have the opposite problem, in that I slack off every time I have to do a dungeon. I prefer soloing, which I acquired from my WoW days.
Perhaps FFXIV would have been better served to me as a different genre but then I would have never engaged with it if it was an RPG, as I had a severe aversion to random encounters and my most experience with the Final Fantasy series at the time was the original NES cartridge, which had the mechanic of not having your fighters switch targets when their original targets were defeated and was a very clunky game.
So I guess I'm glad FFXIV is an mmo, I may not have experienced it otherwise because what got me to try it was the videos on people jumping ship from WoW, particularly Asmongold's videos. This was long after I quit WoW (Cata) so I was not in the loop for what was happening.
You know, even despite being a long time FFXIV fan for whom this really is my main comfort game...
After the beginning disclaimers of the video I can't help but think about how absurdly defensive the fanbase is, to the point Jo felt it necessary to include a tw for critique of the game, and honestly.
It really is kinda ridiculous and I know we can be better than this so why *arent* we.
One of the reasons I quit playing was having people pile on to bash me any time I said I didn't like something about the game.
Well, I think the issue is that critiquing FF14 is difficult. Especially so for people who don't really understand why it's enjoyed by so many people. Of course, you don't have to enjoy something to critique it. But it's clear that for someone like Jo, his initial clear turn-offs and critiques eventually evolved into key parts of the game design as his approach to playing the game changed and he learned to appreciate it more for what it is, rather than what it isn't.
I think one of the largest problems FF14 has is accessibility, especially for gamers expecting something else, and it's often what leads to many of the other critiques made that are then blasted by the community as ignorant takes. I don't think it's wrong to be protective of your own experience in the game, and what you eventually found to love about it.
"But ARR is slow and kinda boring and nothing important happens for ages." Okay... But... that's kinda by design. It's not supposed to turn you off completely of course, but you can't jump into a whole new world and immediately be on the edge of your seat for 500 hours, and if you were, it would be an entirely different experience... and not necessarily "better."
IDK, it's weird. And it's frustrating. Because I know "when you get it, you get it" is a shitty defence for critiques, but sometimes it's just hard to articulate without the same experience and history with the game.
@@NabsterHax Those are legitimate excuses, though. It's not difficult to critique FF14 at all, that's just a stock excuse. It can be critiqued like literally ANY other game out there on the market. It's not special. If the ARR is slow and boring by design, then that's bad design regardless of intent. There's no "It's okay because they meant for it to be that way." ARR is not an immersive experience, so it must be leading up to some SUPER AWESOME payoff down the line! If you're building up, there MUST be a point otherwise it's a liability in storytelling. Unfortunately... the best part of ARR is the movie you have to watch at the end of the base game and maybe the last hour or two of content. It's just unfortunate the slog through ARR isn't worth what we got. It was good, don't get me wrong, but not dozens of hours putting up with low-tier gameplay good was not worth the payoff that ARR gave.
Ignoring flaws in the game and bashing on people who have contrary opinions on things is just the community being toxic fanboys-- plain and simple. The FF14 community likes to play themselves off as "a better community than any other MMO", but that's certainly not the case, there is a LOT of this toxic fanboyism in the community, and you simply cannot have a legitimate conversation with people like that.
Back on topic, it's not just ARR, the MSQ in general is pretty slow and a slog (especially from ARR through Stormblood). It's exposition dump after exposition dump even onto current day (although it's a little better than it was pre-Shadowbringers.) This is just sub-par story-telling. Not bad STORIES--I actually love the stories themselves-- but the method of telling them is just so... low effort. So little nuance and everything just spat out at you piece by piece. I feel like I'm a toddler being read a story with extremely flowery speech. There is so little "filling in the dots" that everything is extremely predictable and there's nothing to really grip anyone who legitimately enjoys a good story. It certainly did get better with SB and EW... but to be honest, too little too late. The game relies too heavily on heavy-handed nostalgia, and doesn't work for many people. People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game... that's also an example of poor game design (and once again, a generic stock excuse.)
I don't feel like I wasted my years with FF14, but I've noticed that anything outside of story has just been flat-lining for several expacs and it's just not improving... well, fast enough at least. The Golden Saucer is only fun for so long and outside of logging in to do dailies, there's just not much to do. If you're a story-heavy game, especially an MMO, you have to be able to provide adequate gameplay after the story has ended, otherwise it's just stagnant until the next expansion. They did add some new things to do in EW, but they're... okay? I guess? Baseline functions that don't add much to the game, to be honest.
Granted, I don't HATE the game by any means, but as someone who can see all the faults in the game it's absolutely ridiculous when people can't criticize a game they love because mindless drones feel like they CAN'T criticize a game they love.
@@sarkaztik3228 "People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game..."
Sorry, but I completely disagree with this statement and it undermines the rest of your comment. It is blindingly obvious that not all games will suit all people's tastes and compromising the enjoyment of your target audience with excessive accessibility is not an automatically good design decision - it often trades the strength of the target experience for a wider appeal. A criticism that boils down to "this game doesn't do things how I like" is not valuable criticism to those who enjoy the things you do not like.
I've already said it's easy to criticise the accessibility of FF14, among other things, but the problem comes when people assert that their idea of how to change the design is some kind of self-evident improvement.
What you write off as "heavy-handed nostalgia" is actually a much, much more important aspect of the game experience than you give credit for. One of the reasons FF14 makes such a successful MMO is the shared experience among its players. ARR, for example, on its own has many, many flaws that are easy to spot on a first playthrough and in hindsight. It's not a BAD experience, but it could obviously be better. But the real issue is that ARR, warts and all, is at this point an important part of FF14's shared experience. Whether you started playing 10 years ago, or a few months ago, all players will have experienced basically the same ARR. And by the time each player gets to the new and shiny expansion, they all have an extremely similar history with the game's narrative.
You could update ARR, improve it and make it more to the higher standard of the game's later expansions (which has happened in part with some trimming of quests), but if you change the experience too much what you actually achieve is locking new players out of the same experience as veterans. And new and old players having quite a different shared memory of the ARR portion of the game.
It's not wrong at all to love an older game for many of its flaws as much as anything else. You can criticise its dated design, sure, but ask the players that fell in love with the original experience if it should be changed and many will say "no" or vehemently disagree on which elements are vital to preserve, and which are expendable. People know FF14 isn't perfect - that's not the issue. The issue is more that you can't do a whole lot to change that without making the game NOT FF14 anymore.
"People shouldn't have to change their mindset to enjoy a game..."
It absolutely is on the player to approach a game on its own terms. If I try to play Dark Souls like it's a cinematic button masher, I'm gonna have a bad time. If I try to play Counter-Strike like it's COD, I'm gonna have a bad time. If I try to play FF14 like it's not a hundreds hour long slow-burn classic JRPG I'm gonna have a bad time.
I'm also personally in disagreement with you about content between expansions. There's actually regular story content additions, as well as added content for crafting and gathering, and regular release of new raid content (savage, alliance, ultimate) that are very entertaining on their own. The game doesn't try to stretch out its content and make you play it until you're sick of it. You do what you want and then stop playing until something new that you want to do comes along. Disliking this style of content release is obviously a highly subjective criticism.
@@NabsterHax The fundamental problem with all of FFXIV's story is that instead of the tried and proven storytelling method of "beginning, middle, end, facts, details, condense, plot, tell it," the entire experience follows a method of "beginning, beginning, beginning, middle, facts, details, details, details, tell it." A needlessly bloated story that takes an eternity to go anywhere with no tangible buildup is not a good story. This isn't Steins;Gate, and fans need to stop pretending it is. This is a high school student's rejected first draft in fiction writing 101.
Oh so that's what i did wrong, I didn't watch a single cutscene not even the unskippable ones (I was so offended it wouldn't let me skip them that I disassociated through them), will try paying attention next time
I just got into heavensword and have been doing this. To be fair I did 80+ quests and leveled once so ot just felt like a treadmill. Maybe I will slow down...
**Hits the 20 minute mark** Well, this explains why I've had a pretty good time most of the way thus far. I've been roleplaying pretty heavily. As I tend to do in any game that allows for it. (Although for the longer fetchquesty type stuff, I put on podcasts or other stuff in the background, and yet, still manage to not be de-immersed). I guess it helped that I started off playing as if it was kind of an adventurer simulator, where just doing random side tasks felt rewarding.
I do have to say, I think some of the fluff should still be cut down a little more. Or at least, I vividly remember (avoiding context to avoid spoilers) when I was in the middle of a super important task that had interrupted an (in my eyes) even more important task, I did not appreciate having to go get a corrupted aether crystal only to end up on multiple wild goose chases for what seemed like a simple task. ...When the last NPC in that chain made a joke that it was the wrong one again, I did not laugh. Instead, I imagined my character strangling that NPC with his own Paladin Robes and hucking them off the nearest cliff.
Heavensward WAS where the story really grabbed me by the lapels and was like "YO! Crazy stuff is happening and ALL THE PAYOFF IS HAPPENING. This is no longer a laid back relaxing basic-ass chosen one story, now there's nuance and drama!", but my gods even my usually long patience got tried a little on the way. XD
Seriously, the Dark Knight quests are excellent, and fit my mood *perfectly* at that point in the story. It starts off a little weird, but the payoff is REAL good.
The DRK quest line is like my #1 by a WIDE margin. Some of them are so bland and forgettable. I honestly don’t even remember MNK.
Oh my god, this is the first time I've ever heard any content creator acknowledge Fiesta Online's existence. That was the game that helped 14 year old me learn that pretending to be a girl online, even if it's just because my lack of interest in cars and sports made me insecure about my masculinity, was still lying, and that the relationships built upon that lie, even if they flourished because I was still, mostly, being myself, could still come crumbling down at lot easier than if I were just straight with people about who I am and what I'm about from the get-go.
It also made my mom think I was gender dysphoric, which I still sometimes have to remind her I am not.
Just watched this for the first time after finishing shadowbringers after 3 years. Me as a player of games told my friend who said if I wanted to just buy a story skip for ARR "Nah, I'm playing this the "right" way" fast forward to me stopping halfway through. Fast forward to about a year and a half ago my friend was begging me to get back on and he would buy me a story skip. I again said "no, If i play it I wanna play the whole thing." After he went to bed that night I decided to get back on and start playing again. I started playing more and I finally got through ARR. Then I got to Heavensward. It changed the game for me. I love Heavensward. Some of my favorite characters and by far my favorite moment in the game so far. The big sad moment... If you know, you know. I flew through Heavensward and then I got to stormblood which I did not like nearly as much and even now I dont really remember much outside of the ending and some of the characters that were in it. But then I hit shadowbringers. I was starting to get burnt out and I was really enjoyed the story that I had played but About when you meet Urianger again I stopped. My friend begged me to get back on and I just couldn't. He kept telling me that "you are finally getting to the best parts of the game. just keep pushing". I just couldn't I was so burnt out. I had played the game for over a 100 hours in like 3 weeks. It was literally all I was playing and the only thing I was doing was story. It almost reminds me of One piece. It is LONG and there are rough areas. BUT there are so many good parts and they Far outweigh the bad parts. And some of my favorite moments in the storytelling of their respective mediums. And would you know it. I finally watched one piece over the last year and just caught up a few weeks ago to see gear 5 in the anime. rewind back to ep 1000, God did I get emotional watching the "We Are" redo. On another note my main game for the last 7 years of my life was Destiny. The game that honestly changed my view on what a game could achieve. I met my best friends on that game and god do I love it. And if anyone knows about the Destiny situation right now, It just finally defeated me, I've become completely apathetic with it. And god do I hope they flip the script and make Destiny the game it can be. Because it is heartbreaking for me to look at the state it is in. With the decline of Destiny. It gave me the drive to continue FF14. I hopped back on and as of yesterday night have finished all of shadowbringers patch quests and all. And god... was that some of the best storytelling I've ever had the joy of watching, listening, and reading. probably my favorite villain in Emet. some of the best characters in the game. and Just some of the best moments like i said in it's medium. I'm beyond exited to play Endwalker and I hope that more people can enjoy the story as much as I have. :)
Ngl I’m about 40 hours in and this came at a perfect time. It’s been rough getting through lv 20 MSQ when I already have a lv 40 job bc of how slow it was I picked up archer just to do it. It’s made me want to actually pay attention at least for now I just feel like I don’t have that much time to play so I want to enjoy it not fo fetch quests. And there’s a lot of game mechanics that I havnt experienced yet and don’t really have a veteran to go through the game with so we’ll see how jt goes. I’ve been hype af for this game ever since it went on hiatus and stopped being sold
Do what one of my friends did, play it for a set amount of time. Especially ARR, I honestly think for at least ARR playing it in bite size increments does a good enough job to ease yourself.
I'll give you a tad of context, in 2.1 and 2.2 is what I'd consider the roughest patches of the game, but that's mainly due to the fact that SE though XIV would collapse relatively soon, so when the progress numbers came out just before 2.25, the player base at the time (roughly about 400-800k accounts) were celebrating. Then comes 2.3 trailer and people see the new class speculation (Ninja tease) and Crystal Tower is introduced. 2.4 with Ninja introduction....the game was heading towards expansion and speculation was on the rise.
ARR post patches could be seen as much of a test-bed of things that worked and didn't work. Things that would eventually not make it to other expansions. Slowly the player systems in the game get better along side the story.
Sure you'll have those lulls in the story or things that make you go 'wtf' or 'why didnt this get cut'. Honestly with how gamers get treated by corporations to actually have games with good stories of old....in the modern day is seem like a false sense of hope. To get it and ask "what is it" just shows how jaded people get when faced with bad story writing.
This irks me so much! I get boosting EXP to let people catch up to the story faster, but ugh, it's so frustrating to feel like you're getting behind on the MSQ if you so much as sneeze outside the it. I too picked up a second job, but I just find it frustrating.
I would have preferred having to do some sidequests between MSQ story beats, so the "saving the world"-thing is balanced out by more mundane adventures. But I guess the more impatient could go do duties or levequests or hunting logs or----
I think there should at least be the option to turn it off.
I'm gonna have to ask one of my buddies if he shares any of these feelings, he was the first friend I dragged into 14, I happen to fall into the "purest" style of playing, I heard you describe it as a visual novel in a stream, so that's what I was expecting, and that's what I got, I enjoyed the MSQ... except the lead in to Titan, which I have helped everyone of my friends through now just to speed it up, one of our other friends got the trial right before they stopped sales, and they took to the game hard, to the point where they've surpassed me in the story and is now waiting for me to catch up. But the friend I got playing with me first, he's dropped off, and when I asked why, he never gave me a straight up answer, so I have a feeling that he has some of the same feelings you did. And it doesn't help that I've been one of those "Don't skip the story" people, at least early on.
I'm currently doing the Titan lead in quests, why is that one less enjoyable exactly? I'm assuming it's the fetch quests?
"You can't play a game wrong."
That's what I try to tell my party when I want to play a black mage as an ice wizard.
None of the Final Fantasies I've played was friendly (or rewarding) to devoting to only one element. XIV is no exception.
Get reported for trolling. You need fire for dps, ice is to heal mana
I was in a dark moment of my life when I started FFXIV, depressed and spending most of my day in bed doing absolutely 0. Then I caught by chance on the fact a friend of mine was playing 14 (back during Stormblood, he was finishing off what was out of 4.X) and I thought it was my chance. MMO take very long to play and are technically eternal as long as you want, so if I managed to get invested I would have a reason to get out of bed and the depressive cycle.
I gave absolutely 0 fucks about the busywork and although I could hardly say I loved 2.0 (I remember joking about the robot being the best character because I gave that few fucks about most everyone at that point), I did not mind. At some point of me playing this game to force myself to do something, it just... Clicked. I learnt to appreciate the game, and retroactively came to really like ARR despite its many irritating flaws. I would say I'm one of the few people who is very fond of 2.X because it was when the setting truly became interesting to me.
So yeah, I can understand not everyone is in a mindset where busywork that makes the game take longer to finish is a positive. I can understand some people struggle with it and I've always said to those I've introduced to the game that it takes long but the payoff is great so please try it.
I feel in love around reaching heavenswarn.
Played it like a Final Fantasy game, not a MMO.
ARR was bad. Everthing else? Fucking awesome. Became my fave final fantasy.
Honestly? ARR is just world building. don't even think of it as it's own story. see it as the world building that makes the foundation of the rest of the game through the current endwalker release. The best way to deal with ARR is to just really not mind it. look at the world enjoy the locations and take the msq as just something that builds the lore of the world your starting to dive into.
@@kayflarenight So the best way to approach ARR is pretend like you're not wasting dozens of hours of time on fairly lackluster world-building, paper-thin lore, and pointless quests? Telling someone to just ignore massive problems with the game doesn't do anything to help actually improve the massive issues with the game. It took them so many years just to slightly streamline the hot garbage that is ARR and it'd still be better just to be able to skip and just watch cutscenes on UA-cam.
@@sarkaztik3228 I didn't find ARR to be that bad. and generally i feel that people new to mmo's wouldn't find it that bad either, it only really feels off if you try to run it and it's post content straight through. Honestly i found myself hating stormblood far more then ARR.
ARR was a slog for me and I probably "quit" 2-3 times. Just not enough group content in an MMO early on in game to keep a lot of people interested and the combat is a snore fest considering they give you all these cool new class abilities but then you can't use any of them because the dungeons are lower level. That was my favorite part of since I found the narrative somewhat weak/overrated until Heavensward, and even toward the end of that and into the start of Stormblood it wasn't that great either. I'm hoping it gets better, but I'm about halfway through Stormblood at this point and really the only thing that keeps me going is dailies and doing dungeons and raids with friends. The music and dungeon designs are also really good and the one thing this game has going for it is that it's actually pretty relaxing to play.
Edit after Completing Stormblood:
So I'm approaching 400 hours in the game and just finished up the Stormblood expansion and I think it's fair to say that FF14 really just suffers from overall bad quest design. Stormblood didn't get good until the last act, the last 30 quests or so were really enjoyable because it was nonstop battles and action and cut scenes, but prior to that it was a boring slog that made little narrative sense. Hopefully Shadowbringers improves on the quest design, but the worst thing is that most of the expansions and game in general just involves the most tedious fetch quests where you literally have to go all the way across the map to interact with someone for 30 seconds, then go all the way back over to where you came from. You are hardly ever in combat until the end of an expansion when they start to throw all the climactic battles/finale at you. This is made worse by Aetherites not being in good locations and the fact you have to unlock the flying on each map before you can travel quickly back and forth. SE could alleviate a lot of pain by just making flying open from the get go, or just making you do one quest to get all the nodes unlocked so you can fly soon when getting to a new area. Far too much time is spent traveling back and forth and going on meaningless quests that make you forget about the overall narrative about whatever expansion you are doing. I mean at this point it has to be a meme how many people need help gathering food for a feast while some world ending threat is literally on their doorstep about to wipe them out.
Heavensward really seems to be the peak of FF14 for me so far, mainly because the questing was a lot more involved, stayed around the narrative, and offered a lot more combat and action than ARR or Stormblood. I'm also noticing an issue where they will introduce really interesting characters, but you only get to interact with them for 5-6 quests and then they are gone and irrelevant for the rest of the game or they get killed off. So many characters get introduced through questing that are much more interesting than any of the scions or the crew you are normally stuck with and it's a shame to see so many just tossed by the wayside instead of having longer arcs and interaction with the WoL.
glad you found a way to get into it. For me, I was hooked from the very beginning. It's like the game was made for me. Completely immersed and filled with joy from the instant I got off the boat in Limsa. I still can't completely empathize with people who find ARR to be a slog, but I try to respect it and come up with ideas of how they can enjoy the game anyway. story skipping just ARR then watching all the cutscenes might be the answer- though there's a thousand little things in ARR I'd never want to miss- like Hildibrand or the Postmoogle quests.
My close friend playing the game was so conditioned by other MMOs (WoW, GW2, the ARR grind) to expect nothing of value from the story or writing that they skipped several arcs worth of Hildibrand cutscenes without really knowing what was going on. If they start playing again, we'll be sure to right this wrong.
You've nailed everything I felt throughout this entire video for me, now I'm hoping the latter half of your experience is true too :) Definitely gonna give FFXIV another shot now especially now that my friends are also sucked into it
Oh and amazing redesign. Perfection.
That was a very interesting and enjoyable watch! While I didn't experience a lot of stuff you went over about the MSQ, I did feel some burn out with it at points despite how much I was enjoying the story, its definitely not something you can binge easily even if you do enjoy it a lot. I have found myself struggling to get into the game though but for a completely different reason that I hope I can find a solution to soon, especially since I do love the game very much and see how good it can get, its just getting past this problem that is proving to be tough.
Which that problem is not being able to confidently do anything in the game. Whether its just daily roulettes, trying to learn extremes or savage fights, finding a static, or just talking to people, I always find myself very hesitant or scared to do it, no matter how much I do want to do it. And its only really with FF that I have been experiencing this, I used to play WoW before FF, and while I experienced this problem a bit there, it was never this bad. I know FF's community is very forgiving to people, especially people new to a situation, but I still find myself extremely hesitant to do stuff, I have to push myself to even just do daily roulettes.
I know no one will probably never see this, but if by any chance someone does and has experienced this same problem or something similar and has found a solution to it or you think you might know a solution, I'd greatly appreciate any insight anyone might have.
Let's be real, ARR is the resilience check of a FFXIV player, if you get past it, you get past anything. Also Jo, yes, your voice is amazing to listen to. Your self is so quiet and warm and level headed for this video, talking about a topic that touches a lot of people. You make your opinion very heart warming, and you just are such a man. Also the conclusion and ending.
Same exact story my man, then fell in love with it. Person I was dating at the time was super into it and heavensward was about to drop so I had to super grind it. Now years later they no longer play it and I was way more into it and doing extreme raids
I hated the Hildebrand quest line. But I hung in there cause dammit I wanted that green chicken! I don't collect pets, mounts, anything. But I just had to have that chicken lol. But I very much agree that Endwalker is the best expansion. I went through the whole story the hard way last year and yep, Endwalker is the best.
This is somewhat how I felt at one point too! I played the game with friends, who I ended up not having around as much as I used to, so it felt awfully lonely doing the stuff by myself after it. It still does honestly, but I do want to find a cool FC and make new friends, I'm just honestly not very good at opening up and meeting new people, so that's my problem! I used toskip the story dialogue a bit, but going back to watch the story and then witnessing the story where I am now, I wish I never skipped it! It's still not a game I can play for hours on end, might be able to if I met people in it, but for a few hours at a time it's great!
I was in the same boat too for a long while, and honestly I met my current friends through some insane FC circumstances 😂
Basically a lot of FC drama and FC-hopping happened, we soon realized we kept seeing each other in the same ones, and just kinda banded together as the "no drama" trio that got along with everyone. 😅
Sometimes friendship just blindsides you even when you don't have much people skills. 😂
I think most people playing this game confuse plot and story-telling. The overall plot of the game is solid, even great at times. Its story-telling however, the actual way you experience the story and how it takes you from its beginning to its end, really isn't good. 60 to 70% of it is padding. Padding that really doesn't contribute to the main plot, world building or character interaction. And although I'm not done with the MSQ yet, I seriously doubt that I need to "pay attention to everything because the game will reward me for it". I'm pretty sure the whole section in the Azim steppes will never be mentioned ever again, except if they want to remind me of how I, the warrior of light, spent an afternoon picking up literal shit in a field with some kids, or how I run errands for the asshole chief of a tribe I was supposed to compete against the next day. Top-tier story-telling, some of the best in the whole of gaming...
Generally speaking, I think that a game should be good within the first three to five hours. An MMO might get an extra ten hours, but I don't really think it's justified considering the glacial pace at which they introduce new features and systems to the players. ARR is at least 60 hours, and you have to be really forgiving to think that any part of it is good enough to justify this kind of time investment. If FF14 is your hobby, I guess that's acceptable, but if gaming is your hobby, I find it extremely hard to justify.
I'm glad people enjoy this game, I really am. But as someone who is really passionate about video games as an artistic and narrative medium, I am always sad to hear that FF14 is some of the greatest story-telling in video games, because that is a clear sign to me that whoever said this should play other games.
I understand your point, but how are you going to use examples of world building and then say that it's padding? How do you even distuingish the two then? Because I'm very much like you, I see the importance of a great narrative in games like you do, and I agree to an extent.
In saying that, your comment comes across as pretty passive-aggressive, essentially saying if someone finds the story to be of such a high calibre that they need to play more games.
I am one of the people that finds FF14's story to be amazing, not perfect, but it does an incredible job of rewarding you for paying attention to even minor details, probably better than any game I've played. You say that you doubt those things will ever be brought up again, and trust me when I say that a good portion of them are, even in sidequests or npc dialogue that most people never see.
Judging from your comment, I'm guessing you're around Stormblood, which most people consider to be the weakest of the expansions, so you'll just have to come to your own conclusion when you've played further. However, I'm not saying that's an excuse for lazy story-telling, like "Oh you haven't played all the way? Opinion disregarded", but a lot of stuff gets recontextualized and almost becomes better in retrospect. You may not feel that way though and that's fine.
MMO's inherently have an issue with padding in their stories by nature of how leveling or zone progression often works. It is a problem with the genre itself, but FF14 handles it better than probably all MMO's that I've seen, and I often hate that style of story delivery. But to say that 60 to 70% of it is padding, well that's just plain exaggeration, unless you consider any semblance of world building or character interaction to be filler.
Hey, I just wanna thank you for making this video. A friend linked it to me a couple of months ago now, and it inspired me to gave the game *one more shot*, and take your advice about how to go about playing. I'm super into it now, more than I ever thought I would be! I'm having the best time, this game has now permanently altered my brain chemistry. THANK YOU!
16:20 I was tabbed out for this part as I was working on a avatar, but the moment I heard this music, I looked back to see your character running across Eulmore and I knew **exactly** what part of the quest chain this is from. And gods, yes, that whole arc is obnoxious. Honestly, certain parts of the game feel unnecessarily large in order to justify having flying.
Also, to nitpick, you wouldn't have been able to fly to your quest giver at that particular point in that zone's quest chain. Even if you had found all the Aether Currents and the Aether Current unlock quests (and those only become available at staggered intervals in each zone's overarching MSQ chain), you would STILL be forced to go by ground, as the very last Aether Current you need in order to fly is tied to the climax of the zone's MSQ chain, and as you saw from the footage there, Jo was still a good seven Main Quests away from that point.
My main problem with that entire area was instead of the game playing the locale's ambient soundtrack, it played this bombastic score that hypes up moments of triumph. The music choice itself was bad for me, because putting in epic music when you're walking from point A to B just to talk to someone makes the music less epic.
You wouldn't have Warthog Run play when you first exit out of the escape pod, now would you?
@@Ch4pp13 Yeah, I have to agree there. While I really like that track, having it on constant repeat not only diminished the epicenes as we're simply carting our ass back and forth across the zone, but it started to get on my nerves.
@@beoweasel They sort of did the same thing with a section near the end of Endwalker, but they cut back on it, which is done well if you ask me. (not saying anything more because spoilers)
I found another way I got into the game was to have a specific look for my character. Once I started to use the glamor system it really helped to feel like it was MY character going on the adventure rather then just some random guy.
JoCat I want to thank you for giving my wife and I the encouragement to push through and give this game a second chance and we both are absolutely hooked. Still on the free trial, but we're gonna try to do everything we can in it before committing money to it
Hope you two still enjoy it together.
Don't worry you'll experience the burnout soon enough. Game gets stale real fast once you caught up.
As a WoW refugee who started playing this for my Wife, I've been struggling on weather or not I was gonna buy a story skip since my wife and I are just hitting the center of Stormblood. I was having FOMO about Endwalker. My Wife, explores EVERY nook and cranny, but I love playing with her so much so I don't really mind. I just made a character I play with her. Slow, steady, we read, we do every side quest. We spend weekends crafting or going to the golden saucer. I also have another character, that I smack content with a bat, I don't read. I don't bother watching cutscenes. But I can't get myself to grind that side character past the story my wife and I have gotten to.
I'm glad I haven't story skipped. Because the story so far is making me feel things And i love the quality time, (we both work and have two kids). I won't be story skipping, The endgame content will be there when We do make it.
The best thing about XIV is that there's never any fully obsolete content. There is someone out there who will be happy to run the old Coils of Bahamut, whether you want it easy mode or hard mode. Much of the story is "go at your own pace." Sure, you could race to level 90 and start trying to prog P1S, but for what? That's just the loot treadmill version of the fight, getting better gear to be able to fight faster to.... get better gear. The story was already told in P1-4 which are freely available at any time, and which people will continue doing long after P1S is easy.
Let your FOMO go.
*Except* when it comes to time limited events. They're here for two weeks, and then gone for a year, at which point the content is gone forever and the rewards go up for sale on the Mogstation for $5. Don't skip V-day!