(This is going to be long, and I apologize, but it was important to get the gist of my thoughts out.) [Part 1/4]
I’ve been playing FFXIV since patch 3.2, and for the past several years, while I have overall enjoyed the game and the MSQ, I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the scale of the world. For the longest time, I could only really articulate this with “I miss optional dungeons”, which always had people telling me that the devs had to drop the extra content to make the content we did get so much better. (I still have a hard time really articulating what I mean with this particular issue. The document I’m typing this in is actually called “Quality Vs Quantity and how “Alive” the World Feels”, and this is the fourth attempt at this on this document to explain.)
Having been here to see how the game has changed, I don’t really find this to be the case. The presentation has certainly stepped up, but we aren’t really getting “more” QoL features or “better” content than we did beforehand. In the first (unreleased) version of this discussion, I went through patch notes after patch notes, noting what was added and how it connected. In the second (unreleased) version of this, I went through the optional dungeons, noting how they connected or didn’t connect with MSQ and other segments of the game. In the third (unreleased) version, I instead started going through the side stories (as noted in the journal under Chronicles of Light, Hildibrand, Records of Unusual Endeavors, et cetra) and how each did or did not make the world feel more alive.
All of those approached ultimately went unfinished, as the longer it went on, the more I felt it was becoming too long-winded and over analyzed for the point I was trying to make. I’m going to use terminology I heard in a video once (though I apologize as I don’t remember which video it was), and that is: is this a game taking place within a world, or a video game world?
Back in Heavensward and Stormblood (and ARR content), I would say that FFXIV is an expansive world that just so happens to be a video game. Starting with Shadowbringers, each expansion makes me feel more and more as if the world is a video game world- being something to serve the game and not something I can invest in.
Continue reading...
I’ve been playing FFXIV since patch 3.2, and for the past several years, while I have overall enjoyed the game and the MSQ, I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the scale of the world. For the longest time, I could only really articulate this with “I miss optional dungeons”, which always had people telling me that the devs had to drop the extra content to make the content we did get so much better. (I still have a hard time really articulating what I mean with this particular issue. The document I’m typing this in is actually called “Quality Vs Quantity and how “Alive” the World Feels”, and this is the fourth attempt at this on this document to explain.)
Having been here to see how the game has changed, I don’t really find this to be the case. The presentation has certainly stepped up, but we aren’t really getting “more” QoL features or “better” content than we did beforehand. In the first (unreleased) version of this discussion, I went through patch notes after patch notes, noting what was added and how it connected. In the second (unreleased) version of this, I went through the optional dungeons, noting how they connected or didn’t connect with MSQ and other segments of the game. In the third (unreleased) version, I instead started going through the side stories (as noted in the journal under Chronicles of Light, Hildibrand, Records of Unusual Endeavors, et cetra) and how each did or did not make the world feel more alive.
All of those approached ultimately went unfinished, as the longer it went on, the more I felt it was becoming too long-winded and over analyzed for the point I was trying to make. I’m going to use terminology I heard in a video once (though I apologize as I don’t remember which video it was), and that is: is this a game taking place within a world, or a video game world?
Back in Heavensward and Stormblood (and ARR content), I would say that FFXIV is an expansive world that just so happens to be a video game. Starting with Shadowbringers, each expansion makes me feel more and more as if the world is a video game world- being something to serve the game and not something I can invest in.
Continue reading...