Semi-hot take: FFXIV's story can't hold a candle to GW2's

[LSD.4673]

The story is one of the most widely derided aspects of the game. How bad must FF's story be, then?

 

Also:"Tolkien-esque"? The backstory is astoundingly shallow. Even if it wasn't, comparing it to Tolkien is an incredible leap.

I had a look at some Year 2 maths questions and felt Hawking-esque.

[Sugar Min.5834]

Posting this in the GW2 forum means only one thing.

You win.

[Kalavier.1097]

4 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Lol fair points. Tbh, those are usually some of the least liked of the class stories IME (inquisitor and trooper), along with consular which some people get bored to tears by if they play with the male voice actor. On the flip side, sith warrior is one of the most praised (especially playing as light side) as is imperial agent. And yeah, bounty hunter seems to be pretty well enjoyed, along with the rest of them I didn't name. I personally played sith warrior as both dark side and light side multiple times in that game cause I enjoyed the power fantasy so much (this was before the changes they made this year that made the game way worse tho).

I got trooper and BH to point of having a ship. My complaint with BH was the insane and ridiculous size of the ship. Though that appears to be true of 100% of ships in that game.

[Labjax.2465]

1 hour ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

I got trooper and BH to point of having a ship. My complaint with BH was the insane and ridiculous size of the ship. Though that appears to be true of 100% of ships in that game.

Yeah, as you go through the story, you add a total of 5 companions to your ship (6 if you include the droid) so I guess they are all fairly sizable so they can have a spot for each companion.

[voltaicbore.8012]

On the subject of SWTOR, I feel like GW2 has actually shared a very similar story progression. 

In SWTOR, the core class stories are quite strong (some of course are stronger than others) and help build the sense that your character went on a memorable journey. Eventually the individual class stories collapsed into faction-wide stories (for Ilum), and that collapse continued into the Makeb and Shadow of Revan era. Then both factions were collapsed into a single game-wide story with the Outlander/Alliance stuff. It wasn't the worst written or conceived story, but seeing my "I hate force users" bounty hunter get force visions and craft a (fugly) blaster in the same mystical process a lightsaber would be made... that was a big turn off for me. I realized that I was progressively less invested the more the stories were unified; my morally ambiguous smuggler who bedded a new woman in every port was supposedly doing the same things on the same scale that my warlord jedi consular was up to, and while I get that's necessary for gameplay reasons, it was still a lot less convincing than when my smuggler did crime things and my jedi did diplomatic things.

We have a similar collapsing of narratives in GW2. We start with our race-based personal story that collapses quickly into the factional stage (the Orders), which culminates in the same Zhaitan fight. Ever since, every Commander has been on an identical journey. I believe that despite their imperfections, the early personal story adds more "character" to our characters then the unified one. My nameless ronin human warrior would really have no interest in chasing Caithe through the jungle for an egg, while my sylvari commander guardian would have been much more charitable and would (at least internally) harbor a strong hope that Caithe was doing what she did for Wyld Hunt reasons. Things only get worse as the story increasingly dropped recognition of our characters' choices. At least during HoT sylvari characters had cool things like being able to hear Mordy in our heads. By the time we got to DRMs in iBS, I had an Ascalonian human character who would have 100% understood when the people of Ebonhawke weren't crazy about having armed, organized Charr show up to their "defense" in the Ebonhawke DRM... but instead they're flabbergasted that centuries of intense conflict wouldn't be erased by a 10-year-old piece of paper. 

I get that having so many different storylines is pretty much impossible to sustain over this amount of time, and a collapse like this is all but inevitable. But that doesn't mean the unified story has to be a bad one, and that's where my gripes with GW2 begin. But alas, the wall of text is already too big, and others have already mentioned widely recognized weak points in the current GW2 story, so I'll leave it at that.

[Labjax.2465]

3 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

On the subject of SWTOR, I feel like GW2 has actually shared a very similar story progression. 

In SWTOR, the core class stories are quite strong (some of course are stronger than others) and help build the sense that your character went on a memorable journey. Eventually the individual class stories collapsed into faction-wide stories (for Ilum), and that collapse continued into the Makeb and Shadow of Revan era. Then both factions were collapsed into a single game-wide story with the Outlander/Alliance stuff. It wasn't the worst written or conceived story, but seeing my "I hate force users" bounty hunter get force visions and craft a (fugly) blaster in the same mystical process a lightsaber would be made... that was a big turn off for me. I realized that I was progressively less invested the more the stories were unified; my morally ambiguous smuggler who bedded a new woman in every port was supposedly doing the same things on the same scale that my warlord jedi consular was up to, and while I get that's necessary for gameplay reasons, it was still a lot less convincing than when my smuggler did crime things and my jedi did diplomatic things.

We have a similar collapsing of narratives in GW2. We start with our race-based personal story that collapses quickly into the factional stage (the Orders), which culminates in the same Zhaitan fight. Ever since, every Commander has been on an identical journey. I believe that despite their imperfections, the early personal story adds more "character" to our characters then the unified one. My nameless ronin human warrior would really have no interest in chasing Caithe through the jungle for an egg, while my sylvari commander guardian would have been much more charitable and would (at least internally) harbor a strong hope that Caithe was doing what she did for Wyld Hunt reasons. Things only get worse as the story increasingly dropped recognition of our characters' choices. At least during HoT sylvari characters had cool things like being able to hear Mordy in our heads. By the time we got to DRMs in iBS, I had an Ascalonian human character who would have 100% understood when the people of Ebonhawke weren't crazy about having armed, organized Charr show up to their "defense" in the Ebonhawke DRM... but instead they're flabbergasted that centuries of intense conflict wouldn't be erased by a 10-year-old piece of paper. 

I get that having so many different storylines is pretty much impossible to sustain over this amount of time, and a collapse like this is all but inevitable. But that doesn't mean the unified story has to be a bad one, and that's where my gripes with GW2 begin. But alas, the wall of text is already too big, and others have already mentioned widely recognized weak points in the current GW2 story, so I'll leave it at that.

That's a fair point. The merging of it definitely makes certain story points kind of.... odd to play, depending on what race you chose. I was aware of it in SWTOR, but hadn't thought about it much here, prob because a lot of the lore here is lost on me. But there have been some moments that have been a bit ??? to me, like:

Spoiler

Season 3 I think it is when you join the shining blade. I played it on a human, so idk if it's different at all on other races, but I was thinking like, wouldn't some of the races (thinking of charr especially) never in a million years want to go through with that?

[EdwinLi.1284]

It varies for me but in Story telling aspect....

 

GW2 is best in the small scare story out in the open world that you encounter and from the achievement side stories. Main Storyline wise which is the long term story is not their best. These short stories even get continuations eventually or not but when they do it helps provide context to how certains things been developing over the progress of the game's storyline. It helps make the world feel alive and Anet has begun adding certain open world content that is changing based on player's progress in the storyline but current the only major one is the Canthan News reports that updates and changes based on player's progress in EoD storyline. These news reports may get updated again once we begin the Post-EoD story in the next Living World once Season re-release is finished.

 

For FF14 it is the long term story, such as MSQ and specific side stories that get expanded on per patch, they are best at but the small scale stories are where they are lacking since most are dropped and forgotten once they are best describe as "one and done". However, long term story is their main focus for this game so there is not much being told through world encounters and NPCs in the world. 

[Dualumina.1760]

On 8/29/2022 at 9:59 AM, voltaicbore.8012 said:

I'm looking forward to them finally being narratively free from the Dragon cycle, so not everything has to be massive world ending threats that can only be solved with the Power of Friendship. I'm all for the old fault lines returning, with the associated drama.

 

Next expansion suggestions:

Theft of Lunches

Filing of Taxes 

Tech of Support 

Hang of Nail

Glass of Water 

 

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

I watched a cutscene from that game once, maybe it was super out of context or something, maybe it was from another FF game, but still was hella funny to see.

Something like this:  You had all these big dudes sitting at a table, having some sort of war meeting, and this giant dude in black armor sit at the table talking about a parley, since he was invited he says he would allow the other leader to speak first, and the camera pans to this 10 year old looking loli, and she starts speaking with this very adult voice about war and other stuff, it was so funny and weird lol.
But the production value is on par with GW2, the cutscene was very well made, the voice acting was very good too, just this small detail that i found kinda off-putting so to speak.

And i know, we do have our "lil Gremlins" and furries, but if we had a "Queen and King of the Asura" they would probably look like Dessa and Phlunt, and not like Taimi and Gorrik xD.

[waruvi.7061]

As a huge novel reader, GW2 story writing feel very juvenile at best. This is personal preference but I really can't stand the modern language in this game, your character is always in constant conflict after conflict without a moment of pause at times I really do get annoyed with my character and want them to shut up for a second and take the hard-earned victory. Whereas there are moments of calm after the storm in FFXIV, it's the little moment of rest that makes it enjoyable to digest everything that happens and will happen. Also, I'm very fond of FFXIV's rich vocabulary and old language that makes the story more immersive.

 

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Only game I've played in recent memory with novel tier writing was Disco Elysium and that had plenty of slang talk so I dunno if I agree that the non formal way of speaking GW2 has is even the problem. 

[The Greyhawk.9107]

10 hours ago, waruvi.7061 said:

As a huge novel reader, GW2 story writing feel very juvenile at best. This is personal preference but I really can't stand the modern language in this game, your character is always in constant conflict after conflict without a moment of pause at times I really do get annoyed with my character and want them to shut up for a second and take the hard-earned victory. Whereas there are moments of calm after the storm in FFXIV, it's the little moment of rest that makes it enjoyable to digest everything that happens and will happen. Also, I'm very fond of FFXIV's rich vocabulary and old language that makes the story more immersive.

 

The modern language problem is something that as become pervasive in the Fantasy genre the last couple decades, especially in TV and Movies (with a few very obvious exceptions) and is one of the main reasons I can rarely enjoy newer Fantasy works within the visual mediums (again outside some of the previously alluded to exceptions). I'm not sure I'd even say that GW2 is the most egregious example, if only because the core game is mostly must better about the language than much of what came after, but it certainly is pretty high up there. EoD was probably the worst of the lot, not even trying to sound different from the affluent West Coast accent that it seems Anet thinks is the norm.

[The Boz.2038]

4 hours ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

Only game I've played in recent memory with novel tier writing was Disco Elysium and that had plenty of slang talk so I dunno if I agree that the non formal way of speaking GW2 has is even the problem. 

Also, that game is something else, man.

If you haven't, play it. Now.

Hardcore to the mega.

[Chyro.1462]

I'd rephrase it to "Gw2's depth of lore overall is much greater than that of FF14".

 

Though having lots of fleshed out lore and worldbuilding isn't the same as having a good and compelling story. While FF14's worldbuilding goes not much further than 'just enough to make the story work', I personally find the story of FF14 a lot better than that of Gw2. FF14 is centered around it's story, and it really drew me in and got me invested in all the characters and the things happening to that world. While Gw2 had its strong moments (for me that was most of HoT, and some of season 4) it's story overall doesn't get me half as invested into what's happening as FF14 did.

 

I agree that Gw2 has much more lore spread across the entire game world, and that it's gameplay is overall more compelling and enjoyable than FF14. Though in my opinion, Gw2 story does not compare to FF14 story at all.

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 8/29/2022 at 9:59 AM, voltaicbore.8012 said:

To be fair, a lot of us think that GW2's narrative is quite weak, and FF14's reputation is being the major MMO that is good at story. I disagree with all the praise heaped on the FF14 MSQ, but that appears to be a minority position among people who've played it.

I'm a longtime fan of the FF franchise, but I feel I kind of grew out of it around FF8 in terms of narrative (I've still played FF8-10, and 12 for gameplay reasons). I believe YoshiP when he says FF14 is an FF game before it's an MMO - it gives me the same "eh it's nice, but kind of teenager-y" when it comes to story.

As for GW2, ANet has consistently struggled with issues of scale when it comes to the story. I'm looking forward to them finally being narratively free from the Dragon cycle, so not everything has to be massive world ending threats that can only be solved with the Power of Friendship. I'm all for the old fault lines returning, with the associated drama.

 

Let's be real, here. The reason the story suffers is because it's an mmo. With mmos, the story MUST conform to the 24/7 nature of an mmo. Basically, episodic "never-ending threats". It's a game genre where the story never ends unless you tell your audience, "Hey! We're shutting down this mmo, here is the final boss!" But what studio is going to do that?... In an mmo, the story is shackled in terms of what it can and can't do. For mmos, it's pretty much about the novelty of getting masses of people together in one place.

Even something with a pedigree as FF suffers in some way in an mmo setting. (I've not played FF14).

From someone who found gw2's story enjoyable over the years, I can't help but to think what would've been if they've not been shackled to the mmo formula. (aka 'dragons')

[Jimbru.6014]

I have heard many people say otherwise, that FF14 has one of the strongest stories of any present MMO. Some even say it's better than GW2. I wouldn't know personally because when I tried FF14, I got up to like level 10 or 15, didn't like the game mechanics, cancelled my sub and went back to GW2. So I'm not able to say which game has the better story; I'm just saying that there are opposing views out there.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Jimbru.6014

[voltaicbore.8012]

5 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

From someone who found gw2's story enjoyable over the years, I can't help but to think what would've been if they've not been shackled to the mmo formula. (aka 'dragons')

I agree that FF14 and GW2 stories could have been better than they turned out, had they been single player or co-op RPGs instead of MMOs. FF14 of course has (most) of the rest of the franchise to demonstrate what that might look like, while GW2... well I'm really not sure things would be that different. I get the feeling that the same "fix everything with the Power of Friendship (and Diversity)" theme would smother its potential.

I say this because ANet really hasn't shown a meaningful desire to lean into (coherent) environmental storytelling and side stories - both of which are entirely possible in an MMO without disrupting the unique goal of MMOs as you described it. For instance, if they really wanted to continue the Malyck thread, they wouldn't have to make a new map or an entire set of disruptive new 'evergreen' multiplayer objectives. Just allow access to a previously inaccessible (or mostly ignored, off-the-beaten path) area within one of the HoT maps, throw in some assets and interactables that you can read, etc. Even a new NPC (or new lines delivered by already placed NPCs) wouldn't have to be fully voiced, the new quest information could just be text.

It's just that they don't seem to really want to, and I don't really blame them. This sort of worldbuilding sidestory doesn't really have any RoI. Sure, some of us who already like the game might find GW2 that much more charming because of it, but I can't really see the justification for someone working up a good sidestory in a smaller studio like ANet when all hands on deck for LW, gem store, and the next expansion are what keep the lights on.

[Mic.1897]

Until Zojja returns GW2 story won't top anything

 

Such a giant open wound of a plot hole lol

[cyberzombie.7348]

On 12/29/2022 at 12:23 PM, JTGuevara.9018 said:

From someone who found gw2's story enjoyable over the years, I can't help but to think what would've been if they've not been shackled to the mmo formula. (aka 'dragons')

I wonder the same, I always hoped that this game would evolve from action MMO to a MMORPG. It has the worldbuilding for it, especially with how you can customize a characters' backstory.

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

I've played SWTOR quite a lot (I finished all 8 class stories) - the class stories are by far the highlight of storytelling in that game and I enjoyed all of them surprisingly much (though the cake does go to Sith Warrior and Imperial Agent definitely).  If I was just to compare the personal story from GW2 with class stories from SWTOR, the latter would win by a good margin (I still enjoy the personal story a lot don't get me wrong).

But in terms of metaplot and story across all expansions?  I vastly prefer GW2 over SWTOR - for TOR, it only started going downhill after the class story and the Hut cartel story with a lackluster Revan plotline and the eternal empire storyline which I hated.  GW2's story on the otherhand kept getting better and better over time imo and I've grown attached to the characters esp Aurene.