Dev Tracker: Discussion

[arus2001]

Not sure if you are serious...

Maybe 80%.

Spoiler: show

Take it or leave it, but personal opinion is that all storytelling prior to WotG was mediocre swill some random teen on the internet could've scribed. And while the writing of WotG itself hadn't escalated past this, its the mastery of cutscenes that SE had acquired over time that upped the bar for me. When combat was a factor, it often wasn't just someone running at a foe, a flash, and aftermath. General characterization also improved. Simply compare the number of lines between Lion and Lilisette as an example here, both being the heroines of their respective expansion.

I'm also trying not to let the difficulty of getting through the story content like CoP weight the actual opinion of the writing. That's a trap I think some fall prey to, especially when pining for the good ol' days.

[dasva]

ah yeah pup buffs.

[Kanriel]

Man, am I the only person who's happy they went with Ulbuka, a place we knew nothing and had no preconceived notions about, freeing them to do whatever they wanted without having to hit a series of points for overall continuity?

I'm really happy with the entire Adoulin expansion. I think it was, by far, the best single expansion of FFXI. Absolutely had some hiccups and some poor decisions along the path (especially earlier on) but on all counts I think it was amazing.

That said, there's so much lore/hints in the game about the south, far east, the north, etc. that it's really sad we'll never get to go there. In a way, that's one of the reasons I'm having trouble even playing the game right now. While I know FFXI was never going to be forever, the idea that there was always going to be more kept me going.

[Yeager]

ah yeah pup buffs.

Indeed. Relevant to my Paladin frame's interests.....

[Spira]

Maybe 80%.

Spoiler: show

Take it or leave it, but personal opinion is that all storytelling prior to WotG was mediocre swill some random teen on the internet could've scribed. And while the writing of WotG itself hadn't escalated past this, its the mastery of cutscenes that SE had acquired over time that upped the bar for me. When combat was a factor, it often wasn't just someone running at a foe, a flash, and aftermath. General characterization also improved. Simply compare the number of lines between Lion and Lilisette as an example here, both being the heroines of their respective expansion.

I'm also trying not to let the difficulty of getting through the story content like CoP weight the actual opinion of the writing. That's a trap I think some fall prey to, especially when pining for the good ol' days.

I don't think FFXI did too badly in that regard. I think it did mighty fine for an MMORPG, but at the same time i also think "story" is broken down into 3 components - the actual story that unfolds, the lore, and the storytelling. A good game story to me is one that uses all 3 elements well; is memorable, emotionally captivating, and one that has me wishing there was more to come.

The actual story may have been lacking at most points - the earlier stories are all simpler - less characters to work with and lack of plot motivation for the most part, but the lore has always been solid - the history between beastmen and the races, the various wars that took place before our time, stories of other nations elsewhere, and when we got to WotG how they filled in details of entire allied armies - it was ridiculously detailed and so continuous that it was both immersive and believable. Some of the quests also contribute to this. Apart from filling in the gaps in our knowledge of the world, some other quests generate more interest at potential elements of the story or lore that have yet to appear. I remember when people were speculating wildly about Necromancer after the CoP quest.

Storytelling has also improved significantly. I'd say they starting learning the ropes in RotZ and really began to put out good cutscenes in CoP. The best ones I'd argue are from WotG nation quests, which flesh out major events in the Crystal War - they'd tell the stories we already knew were gonna happen but somehow make you feel involved and captured by the moment - Perih Vashai firing the bow, Fenrir defending Windurst, the Tavnazian tragedy, Diabolos intervening in the conflict at Xarcabard. Things that pique your interest and make you want to find out more - either through missions or by looking up lore tidbits. And it's actually all there.

Now, I think FFXI did a great job because there are so many moments in the story that people remember, and the fact that everyone is somehow excited to go to the Far East only proves that they "sold" that story well. The real main reason why they didn't go there is because Japanese culture is very well known to Japan - they don't get as much a sense of unfamiliarity or adventure going there, and thats like half the playerbase. It's not exotic enough, and they intended the 5th expansion (SoA) to be a wanderlust expansion. Another possible reason was that they'd have a lot of expectations to meet and they weren't ready to take that risk

[dasva]

My main problem with the story is how many useless quests there are. In that most random quests have all kinds of tidbits here and there and are actually quite enjoyable story wise... but you never find out because there are so friggin many quests and hardly anyone does half of them because you are like why am I traveling all over the world killing lotto pop nms for 59,630 gil when you have so many other "useful" quests to do. Or you have to some as a requirement for something so you spam thru it which also kind of sucks. Would be awesome to be able to read and see all the bits and pieces of story from all these random quests somewhere

[Sechs]

So, as expected, next 3 Unity NMs will be ToAU kings.
ilevel Hauteclaire and Algol! And... Seveneyes? Seveneyes could actually be a nice nuking club for GEO.
Did Hydra have any drop other than the Torque? I don't remember.
Well, they'll probably add new stuff as well just like they did with the 3 basic kings.

[Tidis]

So, as expected, next 3 Unity NMs will be ToAU kings.
ilevel Hauteclaire and Algol! And... Seveneyes? Seveneyes could actually be a nice nuking club for GEO.
Did Hydra have any drop other than the Torque? I don't remember.
Well, they'll probably add new stuff as well just like they did with the 3 basic kings.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Sirius_Axe

[Kincard]

RE: XI Story

I think saying it could've been scribed by a teenager is pretty harsh. I will agree that XI's characterization is pretty weak, but a lot of that probably comes from it being an online game. Plot-wise if you look back at even the Vanilla/RoZ storylines you'll find lots of clues being made early on for what was revealed later in the story. The most obvious example is all the spines for the Crystal Line spread around the Vanilla areas. It was even done with some of the minor quests in the game, like that quest where you turn in Twinstone Earrings...it seems like just a dumb fetch quest you'd find a dime a dozen of in any MMO, but either they had always planned for it to be (or they decided to use it later) as a big part of Mithra culture and it's a big part of how the Ranger quests play out.

[Rosalie]

careful what you wish for. FFXI-2 may be like FFX-2, and be all female characters playing dress up chasing orbs over vana'diel

Speaking of FFXI-2, how is FF Grandmasters?

[Zieara]

Mmmm that pup buff. Might be able to start tanking some legit stuff w/ Punchinello

[dasva]

Mmmm that pup buff. Might be able to start tanking some legit stuff w/ Punchinello

Technically you already can... but it's quite a bit of work and support to keep hate

[arus2001]

RE: XI Story

I think saying it could've been scribed by a teenager is pretty harsh. I will agree that XI's characterization is pretty weak, but a lot of that probably comes from it being an online game. Plot-wise if you look back at even the Vanilla/RoZ storylines you'll find lots of clues being made early on for what was revealed later in the story. The most obvious example is all the spines for the Crystal Line spread around the Vanilla areas. It was even done with some of the minor quests in the game, like that quest where you turn in Twinstone Earrings...it seems like just a dumb fetch quest you'd find a dime a dozen of in any MMO, but either they had always planned for it to be (or they decided to use it later) as a big part of Mithra culture and it's a big part of how the Ranger quests play out.

That's kind of why I don't hold "hints" with high regard as it basically gives them an indefinite window to revise or outright make shit up later on down the road. Even when we consider something like male mithra, you'd have people filling in the blanks about the culture, what they looked like, how the females would behave around them, etc.. When WotG finally put one in, sentiment seemed to err more toward disappointment since it didn't live up to hype/expectation. Further so since players couldn't create one to play then. CoP was probably the biggest set of blue balls ever when it came to Tavnazia.

As someone who'd been RPing for years before XI even launched and how the community itself tends to treat such players, it's not hard to see how story and lore tends to take second or even third string to an MMO's combat engine and retention policies. So, while I'm certainly sounding harsh, it comes from the belief we could have better game worlds. On the other hand, we do kind of have to escape the trope that every plot/expansion revolves around some world-threatening calamity and that the player is The One who can stop it. I understand why it's a common fallback, but it can get boring even if you have 50 different iterations of the same progression path. But I'm also of the mind that user generated content is our future. The tools just aren't there yet, and in XI's case, probably never will be.

[Fwahm]

Huh? Everyone I knew that did the storylines involving him thought Lehko was pretty damn awesome.

[Sechs]

We're OT in here but still, I personally think we need to separate from story potential and actual implementation.
Most of what you call "problems" of the FFXI story are related to the format (being a MMO) or to errors related to them not being good enough etc.
Or are simply not related to story quality at all. I mean, the fact that one expansion has better quality (animations, lasting time, direction, camera movements) than another has very little to do with the quality of the script and its potential.

Personally WotG was a huge disappointment for me. Mostly too many retcons and the stories of the three cities (Windurst one was cool I guess) were written by 3 different people who barely talked to each other and... you could see that. The fact it was watered down all those years was the final cherry on my disappointment cake.
ToAU was cool, lots of potential, but it was super rushed in the end and I hated Aphmau/Nashmeira and some other things that were really too much "on its own".
The perfect flow for me was within the first part of the game, the Zilart and Promathia stuff.

I think in an offline game, with due adjustments, it would make a better story than what I've seen in most jRPG over the last years, FF included.
That's just me, of course.


Edit:
Oh and yeah, Lehko was pretty awesome, and Lilisette is possibly the one single character I hated most in the whole game.

[Tidis]

I actually like Nashmeira, she had the whole Romeo + Juliet thing with Luzaf and the only reason he resisted Odin's influence and refused to destroy Whitegate. I do agree about Lilisette though, it seemed like she was too aware of her status as the heroine, whereas everyone else in every storyline has acted on the desire to do the right thing and just got thrust into their roles as heroes/heroines. It also took her a very long time to realise that hey, our enemies may not actually be evil and are just trying to preserve their own existence, kinda like how you are, it just happens that the 2 goals go against eachother.

[Fwahm]

No, they were totally evil. The justification of self preservation for hurting others only goes so far, and trying to make a dystopian future win out over a decent one is far past it.

[Hirronimus]

Noone else is gonna mention the fact that the final area we're getting, might just be a rehashed version of yet another instanced area which will be clogged to shit?

[Byrthnoth]

From the way they're describing it, it sounds like it's the final area of Escha and thus I don't think it will be instanced or small.

[geno3302]

Noone else is gonna mention the fact that the final area we're getting, might just be a rehashed version of yet another instanced area which will be clogged to shit?

Honestly fuck off.

I'm sick of you idiots.

It is a new area, they've said it before. Now there are pics that look like no other area in the game. It is clearly has everything escha has but it has color and is not a rehash. Fuck off.