What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

[DakAttack]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Why do I have the feeling it's just Dak and the storyline / ending is really good?

It's hard to pin-point where they went wrong, which makes it hard to described why it's bad. My biggest complaint is the voice acting, which is so terrible for every single character, that my brain menstruated out of my skull. The overall story could have been good, but they made the decision that you're special. You can defeat primals not because you're awesome, but because you're different. It's like a teen-ager's wet dream. You defeat the final bosses not because you've been leveling and strengthening your skills, or you employed sound tactical decisions, but because you're special, and I wont go and spoil it any further.

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

^ In that case Skyrim sucks too.

I agree with Mezlo (wow I never thought I'd say that), the story was great and it did exactly what it was supposed to do: start the Seventh Umbral Era. There is one hell of a sequel hook after the credits which sets up a great story arc, and it wraps up the whole Dalmund and Empire invasion arcs nicely. It also looks like we will be learning more about the primals and their roles in Eorzea.

The story is about the rebirth of the Scions and you becoming a new Warrior of Light (or the Warriors of Light re appearing if you did it with a Legacy toon). Also the cutscene skipping, especially in the last dungeons is the stupidest thing to do. All of the fights and scenes are epic, especially when coupled with the cutscenes. I won't spoil the names of the bosses to avoid spoilers but all of the loose plot threads were tied up nicely.

Now I will say that the story suffers from pacing problems, it's something that all MMOs really suffer from if they go heavy on the story. SWTOR was the same, though thankfully it was only the Jedi Consular that has horrible pacing if you played only storyline quests. FFXIV...The whole running around as a diplomat bit so you could go fight Primals did get a bit tedious and the story really don't get interesting until Coerthas. Still the storyline, while hardly original is entertaining and the narrative flows well, plus the game really does make the fights feel epic. The combination of cutscenes and having the fights have dialogue that can be entertaining, hilarious and downright tearjerking at times from the NPCs that actually help you does draw you into the fights and actually give you that sense of urgency.

And the reason you can fight Primals is because the Echo makes you resistant to being Tempered. Basically if Primals don't get enough worship they start forcing people to worship them in a process called tempering. You don't NEED the Echo to fight them. You would know this if you didn't skip all the cutscenes. You meet a group during the Titan Arc that took down Titan last time he was summoned and not one of them has the Echo. They send you because you took down Ifrit! You proved yourself to be badass enough to ice a fucking Primal in the first part of the game's storyline. They would have asked for your help with or without the Echo. The Scions also see what you can pull off and have no problem with sending you in with their support.

And you have no imagination Dak. The game doesn't exactly say "Oh you took down X boss by doing Y" because you may well have roleplayed it as something different. Your character could have been outwitting opponents and picked because they were cunning enough to make sound tactical decisions in the fight. The NPCs also flat out notice you've been getting stronger and more experienced as well. Honestly your argument doesn't really seem to hold water and it just seems like complaining for the sake of it.

[DakAttack]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

And the reason you can fight Primals is because the Echo makes you resistant to being Tempered. Basically if Primals don't get enough worship they start forcing people to worship them in a process called tempering. You don't NEED the Echo to fight them. You would know this if you didn't skip all the cutscenes. You meet a group during the Titan Arc that took down Titan last time he was summoned and not one of them has the Echo. They send you because you took down Ifrit! You proved yourself to be badass enough to ice a fucking Primal in the first part of the game's storyline. They would have asked for your help with or without the Echo. The Scions also see what you can pull off and have no problem with sending you in with their support.

This sums up what I'm complaining about. I don't like the idea of having my hand held by neither the Echo nor Hydaelyn.

[Mezlo]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

I agree with Mezlo (wow I never thought I'd say that)

What do you mean? You named your freaking "A Guide to the Black Mage" after me... You agree with everything about me, and that's not a bad thing.

- - - Updated - - -

/trumpets

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

The Elitists are going Full Retard tonight

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Conversation when the Free Company picked up a random as an 8th man in a Titan Run. I can't remember the exact details since I didn't screenshot it but it went something like this:

Random PUG: Fucking noob WHM in AF.
Me: You know that's the Relic chest right?
PUG: Fuck off BLM no darklight hands. *quits*
Me: They're relic gloves...
*Free Company starts cracking up on Mumble*
WHM (I think): Dude, we should have let him on Mumble, it would have been hilarious to troll him in Cascadier

[Malacite]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

The elitists are why why time we can't find an 8th and have to PUG a player in the Duty Finder, that WHM and myself switch to swimsuits before accepting. The reactions are always hilarious since they range from elitists raging and storming off, or people seeing the joke and joining in.

You haven't lived until you've seen a party runs dungeons or clear out trash in 8 mans in swimsuits.

[Aeni]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Of course, to be fair, I've also seen the exact opposite, where some random PUG we pick up is complaining that (me) tank is bothering to mark the mobs at all, complains when I am moving them (repositioning) or gets impatient and starts to run ahead to pull the mobs and then bitches at (my friend) healer for not keeping him up. All of this while wearing gear from Tam Tara Deepcrofts. This in Stone Vigil.

- - - Updated - - -

It's hard to pin-point where they went wrong, which makes it hard to described why it's bad. My biggest complaint is the voice acting, which is so terrible for every single character, that my brain menstruated out of my skull. The overall story could have been good, but they made the decision that you're special. You can defeat primals not because you're awesome, but because you're different. It's like a teen-ager's wet dream. You defeat the final bosses not because you've been leveling and strengthening your skills, or you employed sound tactical decisions, but because you're special, and I wont go and spoil it any further.

You're not the only one ... the voice acting is really horrible (I turned on JP language and it instantly became better, mostly cause SE used famous seiyuus for the JP language portions), but it could also be that the script is also a bit ... off. The story is also a bit meh, as it seemed very rushed, compared to 1.0, where I actually did like the story and the pacing of it.

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Honestly a lot of the time bad voice acting is down to poor direction. I've played plenty of games and seen plenty of anime where you get horrible English and Japanese voice acting because it sounds like they were just given a bunch of lines to read with nobody to properly direct the voice actors.

[Aeni]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Honestly a lot of the time bad voice acting is down to poor direction. I've played plenty of games and seen plenty of anime where you get horrible English and Japanese voice acting because it sounds like they were just given a bunch of lines to read with nobody to properly direct the voice actors.

That could be an explanation, but compare FFXIV EN Language with something like, I don't know, how about FFXIII? There plenty of localization actors here in the US that could've done the job better and yet it seems as if the company, for whatever reasons, decided to settle with cheaper (and also had less casting to do more voices) compared with 1.0, which had the likes of Crispin Freeman.

Maybe they should take a page out of Namco Bandai ... the voice acting is so much better in games like Tales of Xillia.

IMDB for FFXIV 1.0: Fainaru fantajî XIV (Video Game 2010) - IMDb

I think localization for ARR was rushed and the team decided to focus more on making sure the game could actually run and players could play it. They would've been better off waiting till later in 2013 to release (or early 2014)

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Well the most immediate comparison for voice acting is Bioware really. SWTOR still has excellent voice acting, especially in the new zone (that isn't totally The Firelands honest) and raids that were released this week. All the scenes and NPCs are fully voice acted as normal and are pretty much up there with Bioware's usual good voice acting. They tend to hire good directors even with voice actors that are brand new or unknown.

There's Guild Wars 2 as well but the voice acting in that is somehow worse than Age of Conan, something I didn't think was possible. And the less said about Rift's voice acting the better.

Don't get me wrong, it may well have been a bad day at the office for all involved and I'm not denying that. I'm just trying to point out that bad performances tend to be the fault of the director, and not always the person reading the script into a mic.

[Aeni]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

My pet peeve today is not even in-game. It's people on the official forums that, when they see what they don't like to see, get rude, defensive and very juvenile in their responses. If the other person is trying to help, and getting you to actually look for the problem, rather than a blanket, "fuck you SE, your datacenter is shit", then you don't go and trash that person, especially if they are patient, gentle and otherwise not engaged in any kind of rude behavior.

Sometimes I wonder if internet access shouldn't be tested for like getting your driver's license ...

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

I can only tolerate the official forums for MMOs in very small doses. Honestly as much as I rag on then, Ghostlight, a Publisher based in the UK have the best approach for forums. They got rid of their forums for a facebook page. People are a lot more civil when there is a face, name and address attached to your internet comments.

[Aeni]

Re: What's your pet-peeve in FFXIV: ARR?

Sounds like a great idea and they should do it for everyone.