[Main Story Quests] "Role-playing" duties-- can they be optional, please?

Sounds like a personal problem, really.

I actually appreciate these duties, because as of late, I'm not overly fond of stories that revolve entirely around the player character and their party (if any). It's good to be taken out of your comfort zone after a while, it keeps you sharp. Complacency is bad.

I will also admit that I would be mildly amused by the community's reaction if the devs made an optional Bard-centric role play duty that expected people to play at raid-level, and gated a new hairstyle or something behind it. >_>

You are "forced" to play this job like 0,01% of the overall playtime of the whole main story.
Please....... stop the whining

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

I'm not really complaining that they are hard (I assume, foolish as it is, you are implying I am with the "4 whole buttons" comment). But as someone who is from Balmung, surely you can relate to an argument where someone forces you to role-play THEIR way as opposed to letting you role-play YOUR way? I'm just asking for the option to skip or do it later if I feel like it. Heck, if the duty was on the wandering minstrel or another NPC, you could actually repeat it if you felt like it.

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It may not have been your intention, but there's a nearly identical thread where the OP did kinda throw a fit because "I DON'T WANT TO PLAY X OR Y CLASS. I ONLY Z!!! HOW CAN SE MAKE ME DO THIS????"

Second, being on Balmung doesn't equate that I RP. Or actively do. Anymore. But calling these fights roleplay is a very different beast than what players do typically on Balmung or Mateus, as even the combat RP pretty much comes in two forms: you /random or you freeform and have to "trust" the other person. (And oh boy have I developed some RP Trust issues these days.) But even then, it's a nice change of pace to exit one's comfort zone and try something else. At least in terms of RP preferences, it's also about accomodating the other RPers you're with as well. Don't para-RP with a bunch of people who type fast one-two sentence replies. Or only give a single word response to para-RPers. Don't write out your characters entire inner monologue of thoughts around people who keep things very show don't tell. Don't feed the meta gamers. And don't ego-boost the power gamers/godmodders. While RPers generally will find a like-minded group, I get that with MSQ content, you can't really just....not do it. I think that having a skip option would be fine, although it would feel rather boring to me.

I feel like the RP battles do enhance the cutscenes thought, which is just a thing we'll probably disagree in. ...I even had to do Y'shtola's a couple times because I failed it. (Good on SE for forcing people to actually cast cure.) But I'm also of the mind that the solo instances are good content. And personally, I'd like some of them to be WAY harder because it'd help weed out some of the more lackluster players from getting too far into things. Like...people should typically know how to play their class. And if they could lessen the gap between truly godawful, average, and savage-tier raider, that'd be interesting. But that's also because I'm more in the camp that thinks the Novice Hall should be given more duties. And perhaps some Intermediate Hall as well, which makes people learn mechanics, but that's a different thread.

If we had the option to do those solo battles again, I'd personally love that feature. And one could argue that the whole New Game+ thing offers that, but I'm not gonna replay the entire story just for a single fight unless it's shitting out EXP for an alt class/job or something.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

You are "forced" to play this job like 0,01% of the overall playtime of the whole main story.
Please....... stop the whining

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Yea if we had to do this a lot I'd understand op's issue...but we have had to do it for a handful of minutes out the literal hours of other solo duties in the game. And unless you play alts you only have to do each battle once.

Also calling the npc battles playing "a class I don't like" is quite a stretch considering they have what, four buttons? That's not a class at all. You don't even need to press them in a specific order to do a correct rotation. A lvl 20 player character is significantly more complex.

Personally I thoroughly enjoyed these duties. Cut-scenes can be great but I really loved getting an actual taste as to the capability of these npcs and their unique abilities the WoL doesn't have. While their skill pool is very small, man they are powerful.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Yea if we had to do this a lot I'd understand op's issue...but we have had to do it for a handful of minutes out the literal hours of other solo duties in the game. And unless you play alts you only have to do each battle once.

Also calling the npc battles playing "a class I don't like" is quite a stretch considering they have what, four buttons? That's not a class at all. You don't even need to press them in a specific order to do a correct rotation. A lvl 20 player character is significantly more complex.

Personally I thoroughly enjoyed these duties. Cut-scenes can be great but I really loved getting an actual taste as to the capability of these npcs and their unique abilities the WoL doesn't have. While their skill pool is very small, man they are powerful.

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They're even slightly OP. Alphinaud's Ruin III had Ruin 4 potency. And Y'shtola had a Cure I (in terms of MP cost) with Cure II potency. Also pretty sure her Lucid Dreaming was shorter in cooldown than the regular one.

I just caught up in story, and I liked them. :)

The NPC role play fights are very reminiscent of when you get to play as a guest character in older FF titles, so if anything I would of liked XIV to introduce it sooner. They definitely do bring a bit of life in to the normal fights you get as the WoL in other MSQ instances, but different strokes I suppose...

It's a story driven game. You only have to do each quest once - and then never touch it ever again.

I find them refreshing. The idea that the Warrior of Light accomplishes most things of note in this game is getting very stale. With this system, we have the potential to get a good look at what other major characters are doing with their lives. I'm hoping it'll apply to antagonists as well for an intriguing twist and to better show their point of view.

I like them they are pretty good and they VERY HEAVILY remind me of Mabinogi's RP dungeons which did the same thing of putting you in control of a story NPC with their own skill sets and stats

I liked them aswell.
And at the same time there are parts of the story that I didnt like - gameplaywise, storytellingwise... and I'm sure everyone else has their own parts they didnt like. Should the devs just hand all of us a "Personal Main Story Quest Construction Kit" and we pick and choose what story we want to see (uncheck "romance" to make scene with that disappear! Uncheck "Violence" and everyone is gonna be super polite and there will be no more fighting!)?

No, they should not.
This is their game. Their vision for the story and how best to tell us that story. If you want to think about this as RP, think about it as Pen&Paper with a Gamemaster whos telling the story the want to tell you, not as "free RP".
I liked how they showed us whats going on elsewhere with Alphinaud; and I liked how they went "We wont make you fight Sadu again" - I also like how this is giving me the illusion that my character and Sadu had a really intense battle, instead of me just beating a dummy for 3 minutes.
I'd say, both instance were good storytelling choices and if they continue to use those battles like this - at times when it makes sense for the story and only once in a while - they're a good addition to the MSQ.

Everyone of us has parts there that they'd rather not do. But everyone of us should also have enough respect for the people who are telling us this story and for their vision of the their game. No need for the construction kit, specially not about something minor like this...