okay the rogue questline in FFXIV is actually kinda good

like it’s extremely contrived, and you’re more like mercenaries than rogues (you actually help the cops, too :/), and the tone is pretty cartoony/goofy which comes off as flippant because the questline deals with some very heavy topics. also everyone talks in a weird, hard-to-follow mix between pirate-speak and thieves’ cant. and I have a lot of complaints about the rogue abilities and the overall design of the class. and overall everything feels rushed and sloppy as you’d expect from ARR

and yet it’s actually just fun to sneak around, gather information, steal stuff, spy on people, and stab guys idk

also the main story quests in FFXIV give a really bad impression of ARR, I’ve discovered. since they mostly just consist of running all over the world and reading novels of filler dialog and not actually doing anything

but if you go around the different zones* and just take sidequests it’s much more like WoW where some guy will be like “for contrived reasons, kill 6 of this nearby enemy” and you can just run off and do that and come back and get a reward. so if you focus on sidequests you get to actually Do Things and there’s much less running all over the world because everything is nearby

so I’m having a lot more fun with that tbh, and I’m also starting to get the hang of FFXIV’s weird combo system as well (a little bit, anyway)

* make sure you’re in an appropriately-leveled zone using this chart which is for FATEs but this is the only way I’ve found to figure out what level each zone is meant for :/