ARR Needs Significant Cuts to the MSQ

The main problem of the ARR MSQ is how they completely mess up the timing. First it's oh sooooo urgent, then they make you pointlessly waste hours of time.

Merlwyb: "Titan is on the loose, the earth is already shaking, we're all gonna die."
WoL: "No problem mam. Just let me fiddle around with that idiot Trachtoum, then waste hours of precious time with the Company of Morons, until someone finally tells me that 'any Sharlayan sage worth their salt can get to Titan whenever they want to'". Special props go to Y'shtola for not doing her job until someone spells it our for her.

Same when the Garleans take away the Scions to be questioned, tortured, and killed - and the WoL just sets out for another pointless bug hunt, and - while we're at it - also solves all the problems of the brain-addled Coerthans and their dysfunctional society. "Sure mr. guy-in-a-blue-coat, you just appeared out of a snow storm without any proove of your position, so when you ask me to kill off some of my best men I will surely do as you ask."

I'm all for a complex and long-winded story with nooks and crannies - but ARR does a really bad job to deliver. First building up tension without anything happening afterwards is not the way to tell a compelling story.

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Originally Posted by UNDEAD10000

The problem with removing significant amount of ARR main story quests is that it could ended up causing problems like main story plot holes, having very confusing main story moments and breaking the flow of the main story.
And to prevent any kind of problems that removing significant amount of ARR main story quests could cause, they need to either make fully new ARR main story quests or remake entire ARR main story.

Lastly i just hate current form of main story quests when it's nothing more then running from point A to point B and watching cutscenes without any actual gameplay elements, especially when Dawntrail story is so boring.

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You really could remove cheese-wine-fetching, 8-uniforms-handing,5-people-recruiting from each city, missing-children-finding type quests without creating any plot holes, at all.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

You really could remove cheese-wine-fetching, 8-uniforms-handing,5-people-recruiting from each city, missing-children-finding type quests without creating any plot holes, at all.

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That’s part of why the WOL is so respected; because they actually put in the work and do the small things as well as the large things

We start from nothing, mundane monotony of tasks at points should be an expectation, it’s what helps the character grow

I don't think it's a problem of highs and low rather than a problem of "filler", which implies a problem of writing to keep the lows engaging.
Which isn't just ARR by the way—go an tell me the Sea of Clouds was better I dare you.

I didn't think it was too bad besides the part with the wine where the two people literally live across the street but send messages through you instead of just talking to each other. That one made me crash out at the time. Otherwise, it was fine.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

- The whole searching for Teteroon & Buscarron thing by wasting a ton of teleports doesn't make any sense.

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Buscarron and his merry band of barely-not-lawless barely-not-thugs should be more important for their part of the Shroud, but they just aren't. This place should be the starting point to an actual expedition into Gelmorra (not just Palace of the Dead, but an actual Issom-Har subterranean zone) with a huge lore extension for the Duskwights, it should drag you into a story regarding the Coeurlclaws (and provide context for them, especially after you did the "The Past Is a Story We Never Tell" quest) with some kind of conclusion to the whole thing, it should be the central point of some kind of resolution of the Redbelly Wasps' occupation of Boughbury, and it's the perfect seedy place you need for many an investigation or detective quest which require you to do actual investigating and detective work from the clues you've been given instead of following the quest marker.

Who knows, we might even see the budding romance between Yoenne and Rolandaix blossom... You remember Yoenne and Rolandaix, right?

They feel like "filler" because the game doesn't direct you enough to all the side content it opens, and it has not enough meaningful side content related to it in the first place.

Like if they want to see how to make lower points in the story actually engaging, look no further than older FF titles from the golden age. What made Dali or Treno charming or enthralling in FF9? Or Fisherman's Horizon in 8? Certainly not the unending, breathtaking ACTION sequences right

From my perspective the problems in the MSQ aren't the storybits themselves. It is fine to have moments with the sylps, or moments with the ala mhigans.
I don't think you need to necessarily do what the previous MSQ cuts did, which was remove entire quests from the list, but what you can still do is look at how you could streamline the process of needing to run everywhere due to the quest structure and cut unnesessary bits that way.

A lot of the "busywork" in ARR comes from the fact that you do not have a mount for the first 30 or MSQ levels. And even when you do get a mount it's still alot of run here, run there only to say hi and run back again.

And ultimately, if I think about how you would go about fixing that I honestly do not know, if you want to keep the current quest structure system.
It would arguably be much easier to re-do the entire ARR MSQ quest structure from scratch, a full overhaul so to speak, rather than try and cut bits here and there in the hopes you are not removing anything important.

All ARR needs is a re-localization to make the story more interesting/correct in English, some content re-balancing to account for potency creep, and more buttons to press during gameplay beyond 2-3 GCDs. I don't think we need to cut parts of the story out.

I love reading and I love watching long cut scenes.
I also don’t mind the fetching quests and I don’t want Yoshi P to dumb down the
games story and content because some people don’t have the capacity to sit and read the dialogue/do quests etc.