1. intro
	- hating on square
	- short intro to xiv + history
	- recent issue: patch + kefka
2. history of final fantasy
	- history of copy & paste
	- player reception: hate the new, love the old
3. bash kefka
4. talking about raiding in general
5. story in xiv
6. give better example (wow)
7. closing statement


I really really really really hate Square Enix. And that's not because i had a traumatic experience with Final Fantasy 7 in my childhood with that elevator inside the reactor at the start that made me break under the pressure of not beating the timer because no matter how often i pressed the fucking button, it would always let me out on the wrong side. But i can't blame them for that, i'm just really bad with timers.

what i can blame square for though is their philosophy regarding their flagship game series. final fantasy has long established itself as the longest and biggest cock on the jrpg market and what sounds fun in theory, will eventually just become a pain in the ass for both players and developers. and after the "roaring success" of final fantasy XI they sent a small team off to create whats now known as the mmorpg final fantasy xiv. after playing beta for the first version of it i was sure it was so badly designed that i would never have to bother with it again and oh how wrong i was.

After the game bombed naoki yoshida, the new lead developer of the sinking ship, took the first iteration of the failed attempt, threw it in the trash and built it from the ground up, in 2 years and on limited budget held at gunpoint by square enix. he cried on stage to present what is know today as a realm reborn. i didnt understand the sentiment a lot of players were having for him they probably assumed he had any emotional attachment to the game, while im pretty sure hes just relieved he doesnt have to commit seppuku for defiling square's holy grail with a game that dosent sell like sliced bread.

the problem is that what he delivered was completely devoid of soul and if it wasnt apparent by its initial release as a generic themepark mmo, where the half of the development time was spent on "playing world of warcraft for inspiriation", it drives its point home by introducing 14's latest notrious "new" villain and superboss, kefka.

Square does what it does best, it grabs into the basket of final fantasy names and characters that was filled up at the inception of the series 25 years ago and presents its to the playerbase. while i usually excuse square for using crystals, and the millonths version of shiva and ifrit, who are by the way not even original ideas in the first place, and stuff out the the game with it, it's mostly because in the past they managed to put a cool spin on it; so shiva isn't always a naked lady shooting ice, but sometimes shes two naked ladies shooting ice but they also turn into a motorcycle!

this isnt anything new, but i feel like lately they cant even bothered to do that anymore. really putting kefka into another game? copy pasting the main villain from another game? i use the term themepark mmo as a joke but this literally what it is. "come and look here are all the things that used to be cool back when we cared about making original games, played by a sweaty man in a costume". begrudgingly im accepting this kind of shit in a fighting game, so dissida gets a pass but 14 is its own game, with a world and characters and a story (sort of), you cant just jack a random dude from another game and put him in there, or so i thought.

Also fuck kefka. I havent finished final fantasy VI but the first half of the game nobody would give him the time of day. apparently by the end of it he rips off his shirt and shoots lasers out of his erect nipples. i must have seriously missed something that makes him such a great villain because by that standart every schoolshooter would be a "great villain".

to be fair im a little late to make that point be cause earlier the year they put in exdeath too which was the villain from V but nobody particularily cared about exdeath. now everyone is losing their shit about the best villain of all time being in their favorite game, even if its just his face on a cardboard cutout. and before the announcement of the mad clown whose only trademark seems to be laughing like a drowning walrus, xiv had 3 major tiers of raids every expansion and if they put in the villains from 5 and now 6 you know whats coming after that dont you?

but i really cant fault square alone for it because this is what the players want. every final fantasy "fan" is creaming their pants when someone whispers the name of their favorite final fantasy character. and if they try something different and dare to slap the name "final fantasy" on it there is a nuclear outrage about it. now dont get me wrong, i didnt particularily enjoy final fantasy 13 but im giving the developer who directed the series credit for trying something new and that he ran over the entire fanbase with a fucking tank by releasing 2 sequels of a game that wasnt really going anywhere after the ending of the first; probably just to shut everyone up. or maybe square already handed him the dagger after the first game and he thought he might as well go out with a bang if hes gonna die here.

its not even an issue to final fantasy in itself, this happens all the time. sequels are bad and kill creativity. staying in a comfort zone of a game series to generate a steady stream of income is a good idea from a business perspective but in terms of innovation and playability its just lacking because there is always the double bladed edge of continuing where the previous title left off and trying to get somewhere while pleasing the crowd that really just wants the same as before but different. and by their definition different means that ff7 can only have a sequel if the villain is also a white haired guy with big ass katana and his theme is a techno remix of one winged angel.

but back to final fantasy 14. while the story itself is fairly unique as far as names go, it's still not very creative. we are still the warriors of light that function as the deus ex machina to rid the world of all evil and the empire, for it is always an empire and its also evil. but its not all bad, there are some cases where different paths are explored so in a side quest it might hint towards the notion that some of the empires' citizen don't really care much for the whole "conquer the world thing" but those arcs fizzle out very quickly. it doesnt help that the main villain of the recent expansion "stormblood" who is the empire overlord literally just does things because he likes to fight and doesnt like those who dont.and if you pull the line "you are my enemy and i could kill you but i wont because you might be fun to fight against in the future" you automatically lose all credibility. what is the point even to go on, to play out the characters struggles, to listen to everyones awkward speeches with long pauses, when the villain couldnt give less than 2 shits about anything and is as bored as i am playing that sorry excuse for a story. but maybe that was a hint from the storywriter who has long given up before me and just wanted to give me a hint that i should just stop playing because no matter what happens the game cant take any risks anymore because daddy square acts like a mafia boss ready to throw anyone to the bottom of the river if they do anything that could hurt sales.

and honestly i feel like thats the whole problem. i understand that creating content for an mmo isnt the easiest tasks but you could be more adventureous, other games have tried (and failed) but some ideas stick and with the core identity  with it being a final fantasy game it will sell even if some things end up being dumb. i'd say it has long redeemed itself going so far as to rival the mmo titan world of warcraft even if blizzard took a bit of a nosedive with that before, so i would love to see some interesting concepts being put to practise. instead the entire crew limp-dicks its way through and the recent release of their raid dungeons that just copy paste previous games' bosses without any connection to the story is the perfect example for it.

world of warcraft is by no means a perfect game but their story progresses, the characters develop (for better or worse) and while they also have a vast universe of characters to fall back to like final fantasy does, it at least goes forward and they arent afraid to put their story into the raids as well. 14's raids are completely disconnected from the main story and they are fairly uninteresting on top of that. the first big threat was bahamut which was cool because it had something to do with what players started in the 1.0 version of the game and heavensward which had alexander. yes alexander is also a thing that has been there before but it explores new ideas because quickthinks twinkledicks is a name i personally havent heard before in the series and while the goblins arent a fan favorite, they feel unique to the game and incidentally alexander features one of the best designed fights in the game Brute Justice who is not only a balls to the wall difficult fight as far as raids go but also pays homage to japanese sentai shows, which isnt entirely creative but it breaks up the formula and its just a damn fun piece of content.

now we just get served unimaginative garbage that is retreading the old games and while some of the content manages to be somewhat original, i personally only really enjoy mmo's because of their one unique feature that other genres cant offer and that is raids. get your friends together and bang your collectives faces against a huge wall until it breaks is something i have never felt in any other game before and thats why it saddens me that final fantasy 14 cares so little about the only thing that differentiates them from generic single player jrpgs.

people have made the same point before me but final fantasy xiv blue balled the hell out me for being so close to be fun with its amazing soundtrack and neat visuals but just always falls back into the old habits. I can safely say Final fantasy 14 has been the only game that brought out a trailer that made me play the game less.