I am become Catboi, receiver of pets
0:00 – intro
2:30 – Part 1 – The Initial Struggle
11:53 – Part 2 – The Quests
22:18 – Part 3 – Setting the Right Mindset
30:11 – Part 4 – the Correct Way to Start
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Solid video, though it did make me realize that maybe I'm a product of a different era when I miss games that took me 40+ hours to beat, not because there was that much fast pace content but because I was engrossed in exploring every bit of it's 8/16-bit world. I have a friend who frequently story skips and enjoys the game a lot and I couldn't understand why he would even play without enjoying the main meat of the game. Now I kinda see his side of things. I will take my love of slow, cozy immersive expository dialogue and fetch quests to the grave and die on the hill of no skips but I can appreciate that there are those who never developed enjoyment for that kind of gameplay.
This video is great but now I need a crap guide to gathering and crafting. 😂
Little bit tldr, but to share in my similar experience:
While I was more invested earlier on it's hard to get friends in on FFXIV purely just because the mmo barrier is too much for some people and I can completely understand and I put off playing the game despite its appeal to me, I didn't really properly start my journey through xiv till Stormblood 4.1 released and I picked up the old lvl35 cap trail like Jocat, And like he says it's largely just down to how you are approaching and engaging with the game and much like my MonHun experience its just finding that point where it all clicks into place for you.
I went pretty 'purist-route' and just went through everything raw and as intended but at the point where I started the game I just was really looking for something I could really sink my time into and I just went at a steady pace trying different jobs and sidequests. For new players I generally recommend just sticking with blue quest with the + icons to unlock content, and if you feel like the ones that at least have some sort of image in the quest description signifying it has cutscenes/narrative, if its just blank with text its mostly just a filler quest with minor flavour text.
And while ARR has way too much fat and filler quest bloat I still really enjoyed the world building personally (which I do think helps with latter narrative payoff) and didn't mind the slow burn so much as I was kind of going in with that expectation as I kind of like the slower early grind of rpgs before you just rival a god essentially. Saying that the post 2.0 patch quest slog (pre-trimming mind you) was a slog and took a lot of patience and pacing myself. It wasn't till really near the end of them just before Heavensward where it builds up with the crystal braves/banquet that I really got hooked and I was so invested in the narrative after that point. And I feel the big surge in quality when you get to Heavensward is largely the narrative (assuming your invested at that point) put also I think just getting to dungeons and trails past level 50 when you start to get better skills and most jobs start to feel WAY better and more engaging really helps with the gameplay loop outside of usual standard msq to from A – B style missions.
All in all I think the monotony of most the msq/side fetch quests bogs down a lot of what's great about the game with its narrative/characters and lvl60-90 combat. And I feel I'm just so used to slowburn rpgs at this point I'm not too bothered, I've learned to just appreciate the slower pacing and worldbuilding but I still understand and will also criticise it in parts when necessary.
It's just down to what method really works for you and I think Jo breaks each path down pretty well, I personally feel like I need to experience it all (good and bad) to really fully appreciate everything down the line (despite some suffering). I don't think there's really any wrong way to go about it, and while I think some people react a bit too strongly too anyone story skipping be it because you're either missing out on later payoff or people rushing and not really learning the combat I think its valid if that's what works for you but would still encourage anyone to watch the cutscenes (and at least brush up on common mechanics and job tips if you're rushing straight into 80+ content as a sprout). A massive part of xiv I feel is just how much millage you're going to get depending on your emotional and narrative attachment to it while most everything else around it just enhances that investment.
Inb4 someone gets mad about a youtuber called JoCat having cat ears
I haven't played this so my opinion is mute. But I've been through games where dialog is minimal but the world is so dynamic and inescapable that you insta-relate to characters and pushes you to fulfill quests and such. Cuz half the premise is also something you suffer, see or go through (more so than the NPCs you help), even if the quest is a delivery, the map is alive and hard to traverse, making it a challange of your skills of the game so far (making sure you're also ready to get past a natural road block due to lack of skill mastery, not dialog activation). So while I feel it's no excuse for poor story telling, artificial agency and antiquated large dialog boxes (especially with all the writing theory info up to today and game tech), I get it's so big a bit of repetitive questing is unavoidable.. but again, I wouldn't know..
7:12 srry didn't listen
WTF IS THIS SHIRT
how does the physic work , why does he got in between leg there is no structural reason too aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Love the ears Man!
I pretty much agree with almost everything in this video.
It really is a game that you need to approach slowly and carefully, like a book. If you try rushing through it, you will definitely get burned out.
I'm very sorry to be paying attention to a different thing, but HOLY SHIT THAT'S A LOT OF PATREON SUPPORTERS
This sounds like the journey to aquire the taste for those moldy cheeses.
Not even memeing, both are an aquired taste that, when you get over the hurdle and "enjoy it properly", find an unique experience in them.
Sadly, after going through most of the free trial myself, and having the same misgivings Jo had before "getting into it", I don't really want to give the game any more tries. I am just not interested in the kind of flowery, loose, slowburn story content that you essentially need to corkboard for yourself. Not when the story itself is so long and the dialogue is 20 times fluff to 1 time relevant information.
But I understand and appreciate that other people are able to enjoy stuff that I couldn't. Good for you :3
For me it FFXIV was the point where I was made concious about my personal lean into mechanics and gameplay over story, so I don't regret picking it up or something ^^
I'm about to get to heavensward But this stuff in-between it and ARR especially sucks I feel, like I get it's setting stuff up but please give me less quests that are level 50+ but give like 2000 exp, I'm consider myself patient but goddam. Also fuck the wine arc.
I recently picked up FF14 again for the first time since 1.0 thanks to your and PlayFrame's videos and while I'm enjoying it a great deal more than I expected, I will say the tedium of some of the quests was noteworthy. Particularly in some of the patch content — one in particular having you go to multiple locations, meeting the same NPC before and after having to search the city for 5 MORE NPCs each time, and none of the bookending has meaningful dialogue. Felt like they could have made it "go to each city and find people" and cut 5 quests out of the line EASILY.
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.
But ,why, actually…
Thanks for this long recap. I struggled with ARR in the beginning, too. The only other MMO I've ever played was SWTOR and even with knowing that this is like peak storydriven MMO and nothing that should be compared to any other… ARR gave me a lot of disappointment. Though I must admit this is not only the game's fault. Partly it was wrong expectations about the jobs (Summoner being like.. not EW summoner), the story (that banquet thing) and what people mean with "playing together" (solo duties, no shared dialogues, the whole "Chosen One" thing despite plenty of other WoLs as other players around). Or simply expecting the experience from FFX and FFX-2 which I loved to death back then and still do. But also all the stuff my friends say. They didn't say "this will be more important later", "pay attention to the details", "it'll make sense on hindsight", but "it's a big grind and horrible and a meme" and "it'll become better in a few quests", when "a few quests" are actually 200 fetch quests and a dungeon. I did not skip dialogues, I read everything, but when I'm constantly hearing "this is shit but it gets better later", I stop being open for the alternative or switching the perspective. And then Heavensward came and everyone was "it's so good", while I was thinking okay, so, they learned to implement a story and NPC actions that actually have a connection and people are hyped about this bare minimum I'd expect from a game..? (Also, I grew up with plenty of games and stories about the glorious age of medieval Europe or fantasy-medieval-Europe and at a point I just lost interest in this general topic.) At a point I felt like being lied to, even though with good intentions.
Also I really struggled that it was barely addressed how deeply racist this world was with the whole "beast" tribe thing, that they are even on official hunt marks and depicted as barely being able to speak and that it's basically "kill on sight and ask questions later or not at all" for the general population until several expansions later. Or how Gridania treats the Ala Mhigans, or even just Elezen with darker skin.
When I started to become invested, like, emotionally, it was maybe mid-Heavensward or so, and less about this big story and more about little things, like that stubborn conservative people actually start questioning their ways, with how much environmental storytelling was done in the overworld or what happens with a certain for weird reasons disliked NPC at the end of 3.2. I think the last mentioned thing was when I actually shouted at my screen, maybe apart from the end of the CT raid. (Won't say what bc. spoilers.) And it took me months to get there, I had big breaks and really just kept not dumping it because I wanted to spend time with my friends.
And then 5.3 came, and I don't mean the actual story, but the big changes in ARR. By then I was in Shadowbringers with my char but had started an alt bc. I really wanted to play a Viera but couldn't get me to fantasia my catgirl. 😀 And when I was almost done with ARR, the 5.3 patch gave us flying, Vesper Bay Tickets, cut out a lot of fetch stuff, and it was like someone opened a window in a very smelly room. It made things so much better and created a flow that made me actually notice the story details. (And of course by knowing the results of certain actions I started spotting the foreshadowing, which ended in a lot of "wait wtf" moments.) By now I have 4 chars, I read all dialogues with all of them and every time I still find something new or reexperience something I forgot. I spend way too much time in this game and are working on a fan comic about my WoLs. Would've sounded quite impossible and unlikely in 2020 to me. xD
For me, having grown up playing JRPGs (particularly the Dragon Quest franchise), I had zero problems getting into the main story. I enjoy the time spent at the lower end of the cosmic scale having small adventures and helping people.
I can definitely understand the reactions to the MSQ from the English-speaking fanbase on the whole though. I think a lot of modern western game stories really try to establish stakes and scale as quickly as possible to keep the audience from being bored. We (especially in America) have been burned so often by J.J. Abrams-style mystery box storytelling that we don't have faith in slow stories that promise to get better and contextualize things down the road anymore.
Fantastic video! I started to play on 2018. I was a wow player, so i have had the wrong mindset, but fortunately, i'm a slow pace player, so i started with rush, but, but no so much. The quest seems a bit nonsensical, but the music and the artstyle were so beautifu and innmersive thai i liked do the things because was the way to live this beautiful world. Around lvl 40, i don't remeber well, i had this thinking: Oh, the feeling it's like watching an anime! So i slow down and started to read everyting and pay attention. And the experience was much better.
I don't play ff14 so I don't know
But I have questions about the chocobo sniffing quest
My problem with any game that takes x hours to get good is that my attention deficit-ass brain needs a hook within the first hour or I'm going to move on. It's why I've never been able to get into any mmo. Or rdr2.
Oh wow. The heavensward dislike bit actually took me as a surprise. This is a really good video. That part about playing up liking some things because people told you it would be great. My friend group did that a lot with the stuff in HW but i had them stop when stormsblood started and I really started having genuine reactions. They even told me nothing of endwalker, even "man get ready" and I was having a blast yelling at my screen because I was genuinle reacting.
I still skip a lot of dialogue when I feel like it is just filler.
Wow, altough I already tried the game and my problem was not enjoying the gameplay portion, you're making me reconsider
which doesn't make sense, because the gameplay was my problem, not the story (at least while I played).
But I realized I can't retry because I could only play over Steam (since I'm on Linux) and there you don't get the 60 free levels, only the 30 day thing.
(but in the end I probably wouldn't enjoy the main part of the game, as also MMOs in general. I like the Marrying, buying a house, spending time with friends and maybe even exploring Dungeons with friends etc, but… not the core gameplay. 🙁 And also, wouldn't have anyone to play with as of now, but thats like the last issue of these)
Combat still awefull tho
So it's a interactive story book
I had a hard time with this game…MMO's stress me out..and solo quests were just a bad time for me..the story is the only reason I kept going…they really make you care about the NPC's…like a lot.
I was lucky enough to have friends to help point me in the right direction because I was pretty overwhelmed with this game in the beginning. Took me over a month to legitimately enjoy the game because I couldn't stop my Triple Triad Card hunt craze (I love FF8). What made the ARR MSQ more bearable for me was the most EXP it gave for my job, because I wanted to see what more Gladiator/Paladin could do, because I really enjoyed the combat. (Seriously, I'm so in love with being a tank) Even though my friends were all miles ahead of me, they had fun watching me react to the story from HW onward, and then I got to ShB, and it was what completely encompassed my love for this game. This game is such a weird animal, because it's surprising how many people found themselves not liking it before completely hooked in some way or another. I'm glad you eventually got to enjoy it, Jo. Ngl, your Crap Guide to Tank video actually did help me improve.
Thanks for reminding me about my dailies.
Sadly the free trail is currently not available :/
Another barrier to entry a lot of folks don’t really talk about is a practical one – the file size. I mean, sure, I get it, it’s an MMO, but the size of it is absolutely gargantuan. I don’t wanna sacrifice an arm, a leg, a newborn child, and every other game on my laptop in order to download FFXIV. But perhaps that’s being a bit too cynical.
Bicolor Gemstone Riding Maps. Problem, reduced in tedium lol
It didn't take me 300 hours to get into FFXIV. It took me 269 hours, 4 years and 5 failed attempts at installing the game on multiple machines, account issues for me to even START the free trial and even after all that, I only became a subscriber halfway through Heavensward.
That you took such a long time is NOT unheard of, I've heard similar stories online and that's… seeing this kinda gave me a lot of relief. For the vast majority of ARR, I thought I was just not seeing what so many people, friend and strangers alike, saw in this game.
Great video, Jocat. All the time, care and love you've put into it feels very much worth it. Unrelated, you have accidentally pushed me to figure out how to increase the dialogue box size, which has been KILLING ME for months!
I kinda had something similar with TERA.
I liked the combat system but everything else felt meh.
I didn't find a reason to care about the world or the characters, even other games in the action genre give me characters be interested in (dante or bayonetta).
If you don't like the game from the get-go, don't play it. Seriously. I liked the game from the very beginning because of the incredible score, unique art design, and interesting story. If you can't appreciate those things from the very beginning of the game, don't bother sticking around. There are enough problems with queues without people who don't even like the game trying to play it.
lol i hope how he has to reiterate he's not criticizing the game a single time to avoid having the ""Great Community"" dogpile him into oblivion as he very slightlt vruises their collective cognitive dissonance
DRK questline getting more recognition it absolutely deserves is great. Natsuko ishikawa is amazing. I would even go as far as to say that she is the main ( not the only) reason that ff14 is this popular now
As someone who previously had almost zero interest in playing this game, this video's really got me considering that free trial. The Purist path already describes almost exactly how I like to play games, and I really enjoy all manner of callbacks, payoffs, continuity, references, consequences, development, and cohesive worldbuilding in any story. If it wasn't for the time commitment and the fact that I don't know if I'll enjoy the gameplay at all since I've barely ever touched the MMO genre, I'd likely already be twelve hours into the game by now.
I usually play more action-packed games with fun movement mechanics, like Spider-Man, Metroid, or Hollow Knight, though I also enjoy some optimization based strategy(?) games such as Factorio, so I don't know what to compare it to to see if could get into it. I might have to check out those vods to try to get an idea of what the moment-to-moment gameplay is like. Anyway, great video!
Cant help to notice the aegis of immortality there
I had the same experience of skipping the dialogue in Witcher because I'm here for gameplay first. I'm going through the Netflix series seeing if I can get interested.
One very simple thing that really helps with enjoying the game is to stop staring at the ground all the time (as you typically do in MMOs) and to look up and take in the scenery, especially during the "walk from A to B" parts. Heck, there's even a first person mode for when you just want to explore! (Granted, it IS still all in MMO graphics, so do expect some blobby textures and obvious polygons here and there)
As a hardcore Destiny player, I feel a lot of your pain when it comes to onboarding newer players.
Our being differences is that FFXIV players don't have to deal with their go-to being called a "dead game" constantly for the last 7 years.
The problem with doing story skips at all is that you lack a lot of the context that makes the story so good. The greatest enjoyment I get out of the story is when they do callbacks to things that they foreshadowed. Sometimes those things are 2-3 expansions back and if you skipped the expansion, you miss the callback entirely. Especially in Endwalker. Its callbacks on callbacks on callbacks.
Jocatboi gooooooo!
Yeah, i blew through MSQ all the way to shadowbringers within 2 months. Just to get to the Nier raids. The MSQ is a boring SLOG and i have found side quests are more interesting. I really want Endwalker Hildy quests.
When I tried FFXIV it was very hard to get into for exactly the reasons Jo described. I really really wanted to like the game; I love Final Fantasy. But I couldn't get through the slog of the beginning quests. It just wasn't fun for me.
This has made me want to give it one more go. I think now that I'm older, I might be able to appreciate it more.
12:13 is a fantastic illustration
i like Greg
As someone who has played the free trial sporadically when time allows with my sister (as we both decided to play through the game together) I too notice the slog of the MSQ's questing style and am dying to get to heavansward. While I do skip some dialogue jocat, you have probably convinced me to look more deeply into it. That being said there are some entertaining parts I keep myself occupied with, crafting has never been my strong suit in other games, yet in this one I always looks forward to getting further in crafting. The combat to me is also very engaging. If I'm a caster and I have to stop casting because the enemy figured that the pesky summoner is getting really annoying and wants to plough through the tank in a possible suicide run to tear the pages out of my book just to kill me and relieve itself of a probelm, I'll move out of the way. Oddly enough looking around the world is also very fun. Sure once you pass through an area for the 20th time it can get to ya, but when you get to a new area and you find that perfect spot to see the scope of the world, man is it a sight. Lastly would be accessibility to jobs, I can't tell you how many hours I've had a good time leveling alt jobs and seeing their story as well, especially if said job has interesting mechanics. In reinforcing your last point jo, taking time in this game is a must to not burn yourself I believe I can sum it up with one phrase, "it's the journey, not the destination."