OK, I was thinking about coming back to FFXIV, and I’ve been seeing a lot of complaints about how the story is bad and how the game formula is very formulaic, which is leading it toward a slow death. I’ll just say one very important thing: the story has always been riddled with clichés, boring plot points, and quick solutions to problems that should have much bigger consequences. (the equivalent of the UN killing the leader of a nation should send ripples across a continent, right? So why was it solved in 2 quests?)
I’m sorry, but that story is only good if you’re on board with what they’re doing, and they’ve based a lot of it on past FF games. As Yoshi-P himself claims, the game is a theme park for Final Fantasy, not an original work. I have no idea how bad the story of Dawntrail must be, but it must be really bad. That said, claiming the story was good from the start is insane. At best, we had a few bits of good writing in Heavensward and Shadowbringers, and that’s it. You’re only getting impressed if you’ve never played other JRPGs besides FF before.
The biggest problem with FFXIV is that it’s a story-driven game, and of course, that becomes a massive barrier for anyone just looking to play an MMO with their friends. Right now, you have thousands upon thousands of lines of text to get through if you want to be on board with that world. That simply won’t happen for most people. What they should have done is simply MOVE ON from Eorzea after Endwalker, like, completely drop all characters and maybe re-use Cid and G'raha Tia for consistency, thus allowing new players an option to skip all previous expansions directly and start a brand-new story.
It's dying, not because it's bad, but because it can’t bring in new players. As for the old ones, I'm not even sure how to keep them. Most of them came from WoW and Asmongold, and FFXIV is not WoW, it's Yoshi-P's interpretation of a MMO. Simple as that. #gaming #gamestr
