I wanted a game and all I got were cutscenes

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Originally Posted by OccamX

- Do dungeons that drop gear below my item level? >>> Why would anyone do that?

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Well, for glamour, crafting materials, desynth fodder, GC seals, helping FC members, fun. I'm not sure if you're interested in any of those things, but the more you limit your options the less activities you'll have available to weave between questing.

I do wish the open-world main storyline combat in this game were more exciting. Usually it sends you to a waypoint and pits you against a mob or two, often a much weaker variant than those wandering the world (and that's not very fun). Class quests are usually much more exciting (the final fight at Highbridge in the Gladiator storyline is a good example) and I wish all quest battles were on that level, but even those suffer from the problem of requiring you to drop out of a party with friends (which is annoying when you're trying to play with friends).

You need to"think" a sec Before going on a rant.

You want to go through over a YEAR worth of content in a couple of days/ week. Of course there will be massive story quest as they have been added over a period of several patches. If you were up to date on the game, the story would be over in a couple of hours.

press esc -->skip cutscene.

Wait are you sure you playing the right game >m< there is a tone of game play and things to do in the game plus if there us to much story just skip it you can you wonted to watch the story latter (no one is making you watch it all plus most over mmo's people dont even bother game story and just skipt it and play the game)

Also there is going to be alot of story you need to rember the game did not just came out today it is over a year old and had a bunch of update adding more sotry and gameplay to it all.

But you might wont to cheek thr game and see if its FFXIV Because it took only a couple of minuets for the game play to start... But you might just be trolling ^~^

And if not and you still don't like the game then maby this MMO is not for you, there are others out there to try.

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Originally Posted by OccamX

- Grind old dungeons for poetics or whatever those things are? >>> I have not reached the point in the game where I have the incentive to obtain those. I'm not sure what they are for exactly.

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They give you lv 50 / ilevel 120 gear, usefull until lv 52. You can also upgrade them to lv 50 / ilevel 130 gear with items from the weekly CT quest, usefull until lv 55.

This is what tons of copycat FPS games do to the human brain.

Well you have a lot cutscene and less action because are doing all patches in a row while us were doing one patch each 3 months.

If you are a real FF fan you would be happy to watch all story instead doing repeatable stuff until you bleed. MSQ get better with each quest but HW just put ARR in a corner, is awesome.

Just enjoy the game and level, once you reach endgame the fun begins. Since you are 50 you have a lot endgame to do already but since new expansion came people are not doing them much because are busy with expansion and leveling to 60, etc.

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Originally Posted by OccamX

You, sir, are the only person who has posted something helpful. Thank you!

I did not know that there would be gameplay between the story in HW. Thank you thank you.

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I mean that's what the case is for FFXIV normally, if you stay subbed. There's normally some kind of endgame to go along with story progression, but in your case you're sooooooo far behind at this point the norm doesn't hold. Which I think is fine, because after you reach the start of the current story content (in this case, HW), you'll have about 30-50 hours of gameplay which will include cutscenes but also include a lot of WoW style quests of "go kill this monster," and also dungeons, thankfully.

It weird but I find the complaints very very invalid. if you spend a good part of the 3 weeks your claiming going through the quests, you'd probably be 60 by now I watched all the MSQ cutscenes and read all the dialogue and it took me 3 and a half days of early access to go from 50 to 60. I also did all the side quests. And yet, you come in and complain about having spent 3 weeks to achieve significantly less. You may have started 3 weeks ago, but you stepped away and that is entirely on you. It took me roughly 5-6 hours every patch to go through the MSQ because I love my story and lore. I have fc members who did it in 3. Let's assume we have 6 patches because we have both 2.5, and 2.55, It would take me about 30 hours to go through all that. But I honestly doubt you'd be watching all of it, so if you want, you can breeze through in less than 15. You know how I know? one of my fc mates did it in roughly 10 hours for his brother, because his brother bought him the expansion in exchange. So stop lying about time spent. Skip the cutscenes because you don't seem to be enjoying them, or simply stop. Sometimes, the right course of action isn't usually the popular course of action. I'm simply glad the Yoshi-p and the team are able to make that decision.

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Originally Posted by OccamX

New expansion comes out, all my gear is 110 from quests. Why do ilvl 80 content when my gear is 110?

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Oh, I don't know, for the content?

Jeez... Whatever happened to enjoying games for the content? Why does the reward matter more than the content? That's very backwards.

I can understand the frustration of needing to do all the previous content to catch up to the new. I went through it myself. However, I enjoyed my time going through the content, because I find the line between leveling content and endgame content arbitrary.

Content is content. All content is content. If I don't enjoy content, I won't do it. If I do enjoy it, I don't care if it's "endgame" or not. Content not being endgame content does not hinder my enjoyment in any way. Boy, it's easier to enjoy my time in MMOs when I actually enjoy the MMO.

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Originally Posted by OccamX

- The first 10 hours of dialog were tolerable. (Can I play the game now?)

- The next 10 hours of dialog I wanted to shoot myself. But I forced my way through it.

- The last 10 hours, I still wanted to shoot myself.

With 8 quests left of 2.55 I decided to look at the quest list HW held in store. 95 quests already - the same number I just suffered through.

Screw that, I'm done. I love story, but not THIS much story. I need some gameplay to break it up, for gods' sake! I wanted to see XIV's endgame, but no game is worth that grind.

Sorry, Square-Enix. It breaks my heart but I can't play this game.

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Oh dude do not watch the last 2.55 cutscene it's sooooo bad.

Am I the only one playing the game FOR the cutscenes and wishing they were all voice acted?
Its ruining my immersion man!

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Originally Posted by mekia

Oh dude do not watch the last 2.55 cutscene it's sooooo bad.

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>.< don't tell him that! He won't have a freaking clue what's going on otherwise!

@Occam Razor
I have a few things to say to you...

This character was started as a break from the THREE characters I have on another world [levels 55/51/almost 51]
Those three had to walk in to Ishgard at ONLY level 50!
WHY in hell are you STILL only level 50?

I started this char about two weeks prior to the release of 3.0. She is just now going to head into the Shiva primal fight which will bump her to 52. Shiva is still a long way from the finale of the original ARR.

You've apparently returned to FFXIV less than a month ago, presumably after hitting 50 before you left. If you have been doing just the MSQs since you returned and are in the last section of 2.5x you should be higher level than me. Yes, cutscenes abound but have plenty of action in between.

Here you are whining about the gear you have been given which all MY chars on the other server had to run CT for a million times over the course of a YEAR, gaining NO EXP for a single thing we did in the game, for that whole bloody year.

Just get on with it man! Either that or go back to WoW, which btw I played for 8 years until WoD killed it for me. The only reason you get few CS in WoW is they create the Xpacs around each BOOK.

You're a "diehard FF fan", yet you complain about cutscenes? What the what?

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Originally Posted by OccamX

Cute. No, but seriously. New expansion comes out, all my gear is 110 from quests. Why do ilvl 80 content when my gear is 110?

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For serious I've run dungeons below me for glamor.
By "run" I mean do them about maybe fifty runs because the stupid item won't drop-

Anyway there are tons of reasons to.

To be fair, the OP does have a valid point. I love this games story but the questing in this game is pretty terrible. Most of it is nothing but talking to NPC's with very little fighting. I spend more time running around than I do fighting. The story is enjoyable but this game is pretty terrible at finding a middle ground. I love this game and I can't wait to do some end game, but when it comes to story progression and questing I think swtor did a better job at balancing story scenes and actually playing the game.

I dunno. I think the "gotta get to endgame" mentality doesnt work for an FF games. Final Fantasy has always been a text/story heave franchise. The end is designed to take awhile. Enjoy the story for what it is, and take a break from it when youre tired of reading.

Raise your chocobo, go to Golden Saucer, play Triple Triad, gather/craft, or just plain hang out. If you dont immerse yourself in the world itll be hard to have fun.

OP, ways to pace your journey that benefit your main:

Level the alts needed for cross class skills.
Level the crafting and gathering classes that support your main.
Spiritbond high level gear and sell IV materia. Play the market.
Most importantly: get some nice glamour from level 50 dungeons, for example vintage AF gear. ;)

Some a little less useful but still fun things:

Hildebrand quests.
Moogle mail quests.
PvP for the thrill.
Edit. forgot about Gold Saucer and beast tribes even though I do them almost daily!

It's your responsibility to pace yourself so that you don't burn out. If you reject all other things to do other than main scenario, you only have yourself to blame for things feeling monotonal. It's a direct result of your choice of playstyle. Heavensward has as much story as ARR had at max level, so there's no need to rush. I started in early access and because I haven't rushed I'm still leveling! It's a blessing imo, that we have a story worth hours of gameplay that doesn't revolve around orcs timetraveling into other dimensions.

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Originally Posted by HighMarshal

Am I the only one playing the game FOR the cutscenes and wishing they were all voice acted?
Its ruining my immersion man!

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Aheeem. MY IMMEERSSSIOOON - Aniero

If this game has a lot of text or cutscenes to you, you clearly aren't a diehard FF fan.

You can pick out literally any other FF game after 3 and it makes the amount of text in this game look like a children's book.

On the bright side, the OP quitting means one less person to whine about the story on the forums. That's a plus.

Btw, it doesn't take 30 hours to go through all the lvl 50 MSQs. So the OP itself is ridiculously hyperbolic. Three weeks to get through it? Not unless you are extremely casual.

I don't see why the skip cutscenes option is so hard to fathom. Or how the game is lacking in content outside of cut scenes.

As somebody who just grinded through all of the 2.x ARR story, I have to agree with OP that the pacing of the story was terrible as a returning player. Most of the people in this thread likely experienced it as it was naturally released, over the course of months and years, and within a single patch's story you could do some meaningful side activities such as doing dungeons for tomestones or treasure hunting. These activities are pointless to a returning player, though, since you are awarded tomestone level gear just from doing the story quest and a level 50 treasure hunting party spontaneously forming is incredibly unlikely.

Playing through the 1-49 story is a lot more rewarding since you at least are experiencing and exploring this new world for the first time, you're frequently rewarded with gaining levels, and I would imagine this holds true for the HS story. The 2.x story rewards you with gear, but I didn't gain a single level until hitting Heavensward content.

Is there really any downside to having the content be optional? Even with skipping dialogue and cutscenes and simply listening to recaps on the Mr. Happy youtube channel, it felt like it took forever to slog through the story quests.

And that was as a white mage who was fortunate to have < 5 minute queues for dungeons and trials. Had I been playing a dps character, I have no doubt these queues would have reached 30+ minutes. In some instances, I was forced to leave a group and re-queue due to a large amount of players leaving simply because they randomed The Steps of Faith or The Chyrsalis, and doing these difficult trials with no echo with first timers likely seemed more headache than it's worth. Again, I can imagine this being much more frustrating to a dps class who has to look forward to another 30+ minute queue without even getting to attempt the trial.

" Die hard FF fan" complains about story, go away.

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Originally Posted by Chatoyant

Even with skipping dialogue and cutscenes and simply listening to recaps on the Mr. Happy youtube channel, it felt like it took forever to slog through the story quests.

The Steps of Faith difficult trials

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I imagine skipping all the dialogue would make questing very boring.. The story is a huge part of the game.

Also, Steps of Faith a difficult trial? lol

Okay, first off, let's put things in perspective:

You are a returning player.

Time did not stop in Eorzea. These quests weren't dropped upon the userbase in one go. They were implemented with patches over the past year. It can't be helped that you were away for so long that it now takes ages for you to get through quests and cutscenes. On PC, press ESC. Skip cutscene.

A suggestion would be to add a "skip all cutscenes" option, but even then someone's probably going to complain about that.

I find it amusing how all of you seem to reject the notion there are players who want to play the game, but don't care about the story or only have a passing interest in it. Just because the majority of forum users are nuthuggers for the story, doesn't mean the population as a whole are. I certainly know that only about 1/5th of the people I know care about the story. Rather than just spew some crap about how he/she can't be a real fan and how they'r a tiny tiny minority, get your heads out of your asses. I for one feel the same as the OP, in that the quests are 90% running. I want to use more than WASD, I'd like the actual quest to involve more than just running, reading dialogue (which I skip 99.9% of) and then on rare occasions killing 3 targets. This is an MMO that's being treated like an RPG with the occasional content you're forced to team up with 3-7 others to do. The gating of so much content behind so many trivial quests involving looking for objects or people that incompetent NPCS have mislaid is vexing, and rather than just telling me, like the OP, to bugger off, how about actually stopping to think "hey, what would happen if they forced me to do crap I don't like"? Yes, quitting is an option, but then, so is actually doing that crap to do what you want to do, just like the Devs actually listening to player's concerns and adjusting as necessary, but no, that seems too complicated for most of you, it's easier just to tell us to shut up.

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Originally Posted by Darra

This is an MMO that's being treated like an RPG with the occasional content you're forced to team up with 3-7 others to do.

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Exactly. This is the traditional Final Fantasy story-heavy approach applied to an MMO. Deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Darra

I find it amusing how all of you seem to reject the notion there are players who want to play the game, but don't care about the story or only have a passing interest in it. Just because the majority of forum users are nuthuggers for the story, doesn't mean the population as a whole are.

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This reminds me of people who wanted to level up nothing but gatherers and crafters, and were miffed because they had to do main story quests to get to new areas. They were annoyed that they actually had to level up a battle class in a *SHOCK* MMORPG.

Different strokes for different folks, yes. But this is 1) an MMORPG; 2) Final Fantasy.

Some quests can be pieced together to form the lore of a certain area, which in turn may foreshadow future events or game updates. If not those kinds of quests, what then? As I see you're not only complaining about the cutscene length but the quest system as a whole. Any suggestions as to what kind of quest can be put in place instead?

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Originally Posted by Adire

I don't see why the skip cutscenes option is so hard to fathom. Or how the game is lacking in content outside of cut scenes.

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Skipping CS is EASY, if only that is the solution. The biggest problem is those useless inane fetch quests that are purely padding content, garbage of a story, and can be made entirely optional side quests. You cannot SKIP CS on those, and they are required. At least 3.0 is a little more on point, and put all those garbage quests on the side for people to do in between dungeons, and for other who love exploration and finding out lore.

I think what they should do is to make future patches story extremely succinct for MSQ, on point, and less garbage fillers. But DO make those optional side quests that expand the back story or lore of the MSQ, for people who want a little more than the "extremely focused" main story. This will solve all of their problem. Since the MSQ + Patches already svelte, people can focus on those quickly, while still having a large optional side quests content they can do for XP and whatnot (but not gating them for accessing game content).

OP is seriously silly. HW story is amazing. I couldn't stop til I reached the end.

It's not so much too many cutscenes as it is they need to tighten up the story questing. It's incredibly blatant they are trying to avoid one giant cutscene by all of the quests with 5 objectives in a row that just ping pong you from npc to npc (usually Minfilia). This comes off as way more annoying than just having one giant cutscene, perhaps economizing the storytelling in the future. I would rather sit through one well made cutscene than ping pong between Minfilia and whoever 5 times in a row before any real quest objective.

I totally get where the opening poster is coming from. This game loves it's cutscenes way too much, to the point that they are chaining what could constitute 10+ minute cutscenes right after each other. It's totally possible to turn in a quest, get a 10+ minute cutscene, then start the next one and get another 10+ minute cutscene. I had two points where the game chained 3 or more cutscenes together through this method and it was atrocious (Not even talking about "The Fall" cutscene, where they at least warn you ahead of time it is long). Also, they shouldn't be making us have to click through the mile long cutscenes when they are already being voiced. Just have them auto forward to the next scene so we can sit there without clicking a silly mouse button.

Also, this dislike for cutscenes has nothing to do with disliking the story. The problem is that Cutscenes were a tool devised to deal with technical limitations back when games were on the PS1 and the PS2. We've made a lot of progress since those times and have other ways to convey the information in a cinematic way without resorting to cutscenes. That being said, there are times when cutscenes are necessary such as showing what is going on inside a ship that we will never walk through with our character, or show the happenings in a distant land. The majority of what we've seen in FFXIV could be done without cutscenes and instead done in a more interactive fashion.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Also, they shouldn't be making us have to click through the mile long cutscenes when they are already being voiced. Just have them auto forward to the next scene so we can sit there without clicking a silly mouse button.

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Some people read slowly, especially those whose native language is not any of the available ones (JEDF).

You can click the 0 on your numpad by the way (or whatever "Confirm" is bound to). Much more convenient than having your hand on the mouse IMO.

About those who complain about that vets have months time to do the MSQ, every MSQ of a patch was around 5 hours gameplay.
Do 2.1 MSQ during a day, do the next day something else like leveling up DoH/DoL or do CT or some lv50 dungeons to unlock high level roulette, then do 2.2 MSQ during the next day and do the next day of it again something else etc.

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Originally Posted by Felis

About those who complain about that vets have months time to do the MSQ, every MSQ of a patch was around 5 hours gameplay.
Do 2.1 MSQ during a day, do the next day something else like leveling up DoH/DoL or do CT or some lv50 dungeons to unlock high level roulette, then do 2.2 MSQ during the next day and do the next day of it again something else etc.

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Unless you are eager to play one of the new jobs. In which case, screw you and binge on the story until you hate it.

This is basically what people are being told. And I find it unfortunate because the game DOES have a well done story. It's just too bad you have to sift through a pile of **** to get to it.

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Originally Posted by Eidolon

Unless you are eager to play one of the new jobs. In which case, screw you and binge on the story until you hate it.

This is basically what people are being told. And I find it unfortunate because the game DOES have a well done story. It's just too bad you have to sift through a pile of **** to get to it.

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Ah, I'd laugh but unfortunately it's true. :p

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Also, this dislike for cutscenes has nothing to do with disliking the story. The problem is that Cutscenes were a tool devised to deal with technical limitations back when games were on the PS1 and the PS2. We've made a lot of progress since those times and have other ways to convey the information in a cinematic way without resorting to cutscenes.

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You really don't want to see cutscenes like this never again?
https://youtu.be/VGdz1gjQPrE?t=994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzA1l4oV6A

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Originally Posted by Eidolon

Unless you are eager to play one of the new jobs.

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New jobs don't run away.

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In which case, screw you and binge on the story until you hate it.

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The same you can say about ice cream. Eat every day 4 portion ice cream and you start to hate it at the end of the month. Eat only 2 portions the week and you can still eat it at the end of the month

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This is basically what people are being told.

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And I say that a player should take his time and should not put himself under pressure to get it done as fast as possible. Nothing is running away. Enjoy the journey.

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Originally Posted by Darra

This is an MMO that's being treated like an RPG with the occasional content you're forced to team up with 3-7 others to do.

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Wait, so an MMORPG is actually being treated like an MMORPG? Holy crap call an ambulance. You realize they've always been called MMORPGs right? Not just MMOs. This "chore" is something you literally only have to "slog through" once. After that the content where you team up with others is by no means occasional, in fact it's all you will do when you reach endgame. Grinding dungeons/primals for tomes, doing the raids, you can just do that all day every day. I guarantee you'll spend more time doing that than these cutscenes if you choose to go hardcore into it.