Lyrailis wrote:
That's..... not that much different than the "Fetch Grind" you're talking about, lol.
Edited, Mar 2nd 2015 4:17pm by Lyrailis
I agree with Brokenfox actually. It is actually fairly different. "Monster Grind" isn't even forced on you to progress the main storyline until you hit a certain point when the game opens up and even that is more of a "if you don't get past level 12 you won't survive." type of scenario. The better comparison would be...say:
"So Zidane, you want to leave the trope? Well, go and beat everyone in Tetra Master outside the crashed ship then I'll consider it. After you do that go kill 3 plants and bring back their petals. Then you will fight me but only after you've collected 12 flowers from the forest."
Did that happen in FFIX? Nope, while there's "fetch quests", it's normally to piece together more of the story while collecting (usually) useful items. In XIV, it's filler in order to level you.
Another comparison, since people absolutely LOVE FFVII, is the Weapons line of side of quest, you know..collecting the desert rose and such? If that was forced onto you in order to progress the plot THEN it would be similar to what you have to do in XIV. I mean, killing squirrels does not help me learn about the world and storyline, nor does fetching cheese and passing out pretzels and fetching laundry. When it comes to MMOs, they have to force the filler on us in order to level us if they take out over world grinding for example.
In your example:
Quote:
Go through Mine, fight everything on the way.
Kill boss.
Hit the A button about 50 times to get through the dialogue.
Walk south (fight everything along the way), enter castle in the desert.
Hit the A button about 50 times to get through the dialogue, also some random people you have to talk to to progress said dialogue.
Fight boss.
Walk East to cave, fight everything along the way.
Go in cave, go through cave, fight everything along the way.
Exit cave, go to town, fight everything along the way.
Hit the A button about 50 times to get through the dialogue, also some random people you have to talk to to progress said dialogue
Broken Down it's:
Get Story
Go to dungeon location, do your thing
Get more story, kill boss
More story relevant to the plot
Next segment, relevant to the plot
More story
Fight boss
More story
Next segment, do your thing
Hit town, get some info relevant to the plot and not "GO GET MY ******** LAUNDRY"
More "Main story" element.
In XIV, there's a good chance unless the NPC is marked, it's not going to give you any info related to the actual plot of the world or current storyline you're working on. That's why it's a bit hard to compare offline and online progression, but at the same time..offline storylines were more relevant. Sometimes you had to wait until you beat a good chunk to unlock side quest that explains some plot devices, e.g Cloud x Zack or the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF ELIXIRS IN CLOCKS, but never had offline FF games forced you to do fetch quests to progress the plot almost every step of the way.
When you were escaping midgard, it didn't slow the plot progression to force you to slay 40 monsters for the main story. "forced" slaying are called boss battles.
Edited, Mar 2nd 2015 8:22pm by Theonehio