Bellular’s Further Adventures Impressions of completing the Rogue storyline, the immersive nature of the world, colloquial dialogue & more
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An integral part of a Rpg is in fact the dialogs. Even a simple andventure in DnD, as for example a one shot episode, has a basic level of interaction between the players and the npcs. (Then of course "murder hobos" exist). There are Rpg players who find odd that people play a game, a rpg, just for the gameplay, not caring about the world building. You cannot pretend to "Role playing a character" in a different world without having at least a form of simple conversation, such as having at least two possible answers to give in a linear conversation.
Fun small detail. Once you have the rogue guild quest done, the npcs actually show up in various parts of Limsa. The Mi'qote shows up outside the bismark on occasion.
It's almost as if you have to actually care about the characters for a story to be entertaining. Weird. Lol.
I would find myself coming back to tge NPC if they have different dialogue from time to time
Ahhh when your fetch quest has a fetch quest
people say Blizzard needs a Yoshi P, I say they also need an Ishikawa as well.
There's a lot of that in FF14. People telling you to do your thing, and they'll go do theirs, and you reconvene and you both move forward. Makes the rest of the team feel competent.
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Rogue Story was good, but the Lalafell "Antagonist" really killed it a bit for me.
I just cant take those guys serious… They look and emote like children… I mean, whenever the Yellow Jacket Captain got mad, all I saw was a Toddler throwing a tantrum…
If I were to pick out a single aspect of this game that excels, it would be "character development.' Even the NPC's of the most minor status are not static. I've played games where you slog through hours and hours of content, and when all is said and done, everyone at the very end is the same exact generic character they were at the beginning. That's no way to tell a story. Change happens or you lose the emersion into the story. There are characters you meet early on in which you will form an opinion. Don't grasp too hard onto that, because in this game they grow, regress, mature, learn, capitulate, redeem etc. A great by-product of that is when you DO run into a truly evil presence with no redeeming qualities it makes an impression. Your character grows as well…and not just through strength/leveling. I think one of my favorite things is how sometimes npc's will actually rib you about being so stoic and nodding all the time. So they even break down the 4th wall to some extent to give your own character personality.
ARR 1-50 Class quest narratives vaguely rated by some guy on the internet who has an opinion that probably is not the same as yours.
Marauder – 'sgood / Warrior – OK
Gladiator – Wonderful / Paladin – meh
Archer – OK / Bard – Amusing?
Conjuror – 'sgood / White Mage – Lore-isious
Arcanist – Fun / Scholar – Great / Summoner – Y'Mhitra 😀
Thaumaturge – meh / Black Mage – Decent
Pugilist – OK / Monk – OK
Lancer – Decent / Dragoon – ESTIN…..*ahem* Great.
Rouge – Great / Ninja – Decent
Blizzard is scared of it because they know their audience, if they slowed things down to talk to Jaina, all the players with the attention span of a gnat will unsub. they are not there for talky talky, they are there for big shooty boom boom for shiny loot. why do you think the story and lore in such shambles. It irks me whenever I go to play a MMORPG, and the RPG portion is gutted to oblivion because everyone wants the MMO part only, the RPG portion be damned. Then again Blizzard is responsible for that as well in a way. the community and playerbase are theirs to be shaped. they design content and story for a particular crowd and anyone who doesnt fit into that little box has long since gone away. Which is why when Blizzard used the word "Immersion", Im like "That word, you keep using it, I dont think it means what you think it means."
So like a lot of us who were playing around the time of the Rogue drop in…2.4 (it's been so long that I actually had to look it up), I picked up Rogue to see what it was about. The start was pretty alright, pretty typical…up until the ending of the level 5 quest. Without saying anything about it, it was probably the best real introduction to a starting city class guild that any other the others could wish to have had.
I don't really play NIN, it feels a little too overly complicated to me (and I play MNK, for crying out loud), but I will ALWAYS remember that cutscene because it is that good.
Am I the only one who, when my character is emoting during a cutscene, makes up obscene and ridiculous things and says them out loud as a response to the npc's?
Jackie and Urianger talking to each other would make Eorzea implode.
And if you meet a person from a storyline you have done already in a different storyline, they will remember you.
Well you sound like a right bene cove, sharp on yer betaers and handy with the daddles.
As someone with english as his 2nd language, while I did like what happened in the Rogue storyline it was insuferable reading through all the words and slang that the guild used. I had to like go 2 or 3 times per textbox reading slooowly to understand what they were talking about. LOL
Modern Blizzard has the assumption that players don't like their story and want to get over it as soon as possible. At the same time though they also seem to think they're so fucking clever with that story that players must be forced to go through with it at least once. And thus we get this compromise that benefits nobody: short-ish campaign that still feels boring to play through because you collect items and kill monster instead of interacting with the characters and the quest text is this skippable massive wall that nobody likes to read but also can be ignored completlely because quest markers always point you to right direction. And this isn't just with Blizzard. Diablo 3 pretty much worked in same way expect that player protagonist was also snarky asshole.
Either stop pretending and let players skip the story or assume that players who sub to your game want to play it and make it the best version you can for those players.
Ninja story gave me some real good feels all around you will love it.
I do think people overblow the tedium of ARR MSQ personally. I agree it's the weakest narrative wise but I do think it does a great job at world building for the plot post 40
Square Enix have clearly invested in the engine to make those cutscenes work (*many* character poses, facial expressions on top of poses, camera movement, etc). And also offered a lot of those to the players as well, as emotes (with that same expression "layer"), many in the base game, a lot to be gotten from quests or the like (all the cities have their own dance you can unlock, for example, and the Grand Company you are part of has a specific /salute), some from events and/or the RL money store.
I mentioned that cutscene system to some friends, and one (who's into game design as well) said "It looks to me like they've built a really robust emote and camera system, and designers use it to make content". Also, it doesn't have the somewhat weird and exaggerated mouth movement current WoW has (it's really jarring for me on, say, Tauren characters). And your character is in the cutscenes all the time (unless it's a bit of "external exposure" where you're shown something your character wouldn't know right away, but it's good for you as player to have that knowledge/information).
There's also the more "hidden" bits of storytelling and worldbuilding, where the NPCs (where they are clickable) they will have very often have a sensible line (or two) to comment on the current situation, or world, or whatever. Later on, where you're in your "Hero Base", keep clicking the NPCs to get hints of personality and little side stories (just to make the world alive).
There's also some interesting flavour text on various items, just to add a little worldbuilding. Or sometimes a little silliness (just makes you grin or smile).
All good solid stuff.