Having to slog through lvl 50 quests is tedious

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Originally Posted by NolLacnala

Standard business practice; create a problem (ARR slog), sell the solution (jump potions)

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Considering that jump potions were added more than two years after the final 2.x patch, I really doubt those patches were made with the intent to sell jump potions.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

Tanaka was at the helm of that game, and this game(1.0). It didn't work out so well with the newer generation of gamers that came.. and thus we are stuck with Yoshida now. As much as I hate to admit, dude saved the game, rather we like what he does with it over not.

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I do realize this, but I don't think forcing a full MSQ on ARR players is what saved the game. I was just musing that XI handles access to content far better than XIV does.

XI also has a massive story, but most end-game content is unlocked after a small handful of quests (from their respective MSQ/mission lines). At that point, you can get your hands dirty right away, or you can continue with the story for additional rewards.

Every so often people will defend the decision to force full-MSQ completion because "FF games are known for their story!" - and yes, that is true. However, this is also an MMO, not a single-player game. MMOs draw players for a variety of reasons, and forcing them through several hours of content they may not enjoy is rarely the best way to go about things.

Ah I was here a couple days ago rofl.
It helps to have friends who are willing to help you run through it!
I think only the last 10-something quests are relevant to the story leading up to HW ;;
I was tempted to jump skip it but the finale was pretty amazing to watch!

It's sad that they are willing to lose so many players over this. Sometimes I wonder if they are aware of the big player dropout in that part of the story.

Simple solution have a tank leveled, decently geared, to by pass story lines fast. Other jobs find a tank buddy and rotate roles, makes leveling really easy and fast. Jump potions are optional and to be honest unless your desperate fall for the business plan alternative. -.-...an alternate solution is rely on your FC buddies... I mean that is why you joined one right or do they not care? hmmm I wonder...

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Unless you do Raphsody. Then you have to do them. After all you can't do Raphsody's Sky stuff if you don't have access to sky. You also couldn't do fun things in Sky when it was a busy thing unless you progressed far enough to again gain access Sky. Same with Sea or to be able to get to fight some of SoA's more fun bosses. Also had to unlock limbus just so you can up grade some of the best gear so you could do/enjoy the latest content. XI had just as many lockouts. Sure you didnt have to finish all or any of CoP to enter into ToA stuff because they treated each expansion as it's own thing until you run into roadblocks that make some people go how is that unlock needed for this? Then you had to go and backtrack.

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Of course there are requirements, and some items were linked to other zones/content being unlocked. However, XI gives you the choice to unlock things as you want. If you wanted to do focus on Sky, you could go straight to those missions and unlock it while mostly ignoring the other expansions. Usually the zones/content were unlocked pretty early on in the storyline. I think Limbus required you to be on the final chapter of CoP, but this was far more rare. Rhapsodies doesn't require full completion of any story line - but yes, you have to have access to a couple of areas. This is vastly different than forcing hundreds of quests to get into relevant end-game content.

XIV does not let you pick and choose your path. If you only want to do SB content, you must complete ARR and Heavensward and then you can finally begin your journey. That is off-putting to a lot of people :X

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Originally Posted by alimdia

It's sad that they are willing to lose so many players over this. Sometimes I wonder if they are aware of the big player dropout in that part of the story.

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It would be bad business NOT to keep track of that. Is that number published somewhere I don't know about?

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Originally Posted by Vidu

...I dont believe that most men are actually to stupid to fall for her looks. I'm fully aware that most people will be intelligent enough to realise that those looks are the only thing shes got going.)

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As a guy I do like the looks of Minfilia. But as a character I dislike her a lot, and that dislike is growing. I'm not in HW content yet, but everything I've seen thus far has made me sour on her.

For example, and I know this is knit-picking and not really a big deal, but just as we were getting ready to finally leave Waking Sands, Minfilia wanted me to give a book to Urianger who was literally standing in the next room. I was like, "He's right over there. Just walk over there and give it to him!"

Then when I actually did give the book to Urianger, Minfilia calls me on the linkpearl and is all, "lol I couldn't wait for you. Meet me in Revenant's Toll!"

C'mon. She needs more self-deprecating Alphinaud moments.

The reason there are so many quests is because of story patching. Y'know, content that kept the original ARR players hooked months after they beat Ultima weapon? It's the same deal with Heavensward. Once you beat the main guy, you'll have a week and a half of additional quests to get through to reach Stormblood. And Stormblood just had two story patches with many more to come. This is called content.. You're getting your money's worth. It's a good thing! If you don't like it, buy a skip potion.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

Tanaka was at the helm of that game, and this game(1.0). It didn't work out so well with the newer generation of gamers that came.. and thus we are stuck with Yoshida now. As much as I hate to admit, dude saved the game, rather we like what he does with it over not.

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What do you mean by "Stuck with"? Yoshi P. puts out a fun product enjoyed by millions. Are you sure you don't mean "Lucky to have?"

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

The reason there are so many quests is because of story patching. Y'know, content that kept the original ARR players hooked months after they beat Ultima weapon? It's the same deal with Heavensward. Once you beat the main guy, you'll have a week and a half of additional quests to get through to reach Stormblood. And Stormblood just had two story patches with many more to come. This is called content.. You're getting your money's worth. It's a good thing! If you don't like it, buy a skip potion.

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Sure, I suppose it's content - but it's content of the lowest level. It's filler. There are so many pointless fetch quests - and that's not including the hundreds of random !'s quests all over the place. At least those give you some XP for your leveling.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

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The reason for those differences are how the XI team and the 2.0+ team for XIV do the expansions. In XI they were their own little things with their own stories while obviously in XIV it's a continuing story. Sure, that can be off putting to some but so was wasting hours getting nothing done because you couldn't get a group together and you weren't a smn/bst/blu/pup/rdm. Because lets face it even with 5 AI's somethings weren't going to be cleared "solo" for a lot of people. Along with there's only so many times until you start grumbling about the npcs you've done countless of things with not knowing who you were just because it was the start of a seperate storyline. I highly doubt a lot of people who join XI now or a few years ago would have enjoyed playing XI before some of the MASSIVE QoL they put into the game under the current team. Especially without the insane amount of short cuts they put into the game not being there.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

The reason for those differences are how the XI team and the 2.0+ team for XIV do the expansions. In XI they were their own little things with their own stories while obviously in XIV it's a continuing story. Sure, that can be off putting to some but so was wasting hours getting nothing done because you couldn't get a group together and you weren't a smn/bst/blu/pup/rdm. Because lets face it even with 5 AI's somethings weren't going to be cleared "solo" for a lot of people. Along with there's only so many times until you start grumbling about the npcs you've done countless of things with not knowing who you were just because it was the start of a seperate storyline. I highly doubt a lot of people who join XI now or a few years ago would have enjoyed playing XI before some of the MASSIVE QoL they put into the game under the current team. Especially without the insane amount of short cuts they put into the game not being there.

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I'm really not trying to get much into the XI vs. XIV debate here as they are vastly different. This is strictly with how they handle unlocking content. For the most part, XI let you pick your path, and your pace. XIV does not. This would be like forcing full city rank/missions, ZM and CoP missions on someone who was eager to get into Assaults or Einherjar (from ToaU).

XIV is a modern game. It should absolutely blow XI out of the water with how they implement things, but many times they do not. In my opinion, the full MSQ requirement is a massive turn-off.

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Originally Posted by Lium

It's all a matter of opinion, of course. I find them boring because all I'm doing is delivering stuff. Basically, just fetch quests.

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Less fetch quests and more "talk to this person" quests.

I don't mind the 2.x series at all myself, but it's not due to any really interesting quest design, that's for sure. There's a lot of plot that goes on, including stuff setting up future events, alongside quite a bit of character development moments, that I really enjoyed (I find many MMOs rush their character stories to a silly degree and find it distracting).

All that plot relevant stuff makes it trickier to just turn around and make chunks of it optional or removed, though. I do wish they would opt to make the 2.x series an optional block, meant to be done in order if you want, but you can pick up with HW upon defeating Ultima if you want that instead and just have to acknowledge that "thar be spoilers ahead, Cap'n" when moving past the 2.x block (ideally you'd be able to do the 2.x series, in order, at your own leisure if you want the full context of the various story moments).

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Fair enough. But the story wouldnt suffer if Minifila would be replaced by a potted plant (seeing how certain flowers sell for a lot of gil on the market, I should pitch this idea to Tataru...!)

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I mean, it would be pretty tough to convince people that a plotted plant is sending out letters and having boring meetings with emissaries and others vying for the attention of the Scions when we're out doing all the fun stuff (make no mistake, that's largely what she does - a lot of management and meetings and letter writing and coordinating...all that boring stuff that keeps the Scions working as an effective organization, so she's hardly just a pretty face).

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Originally Posted by Yuiipuru

I think only the last 10-something quests are relevant to the story leading up to HW ;;

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You'd be surprised at what's relevant and what isn't. Some of it is super connected directly to the main plot of HW, some is connected to plots that take place later, some of it deals more with thematic elements that are ongoing, some of it is focused on character developments that while not plot intrinsic do add to the overall feeling that the characters are meant to be developing characters and not cardboard cutouts handing out quests, and some of it

is stuff that arguably still hasn't been properly dealt with or resolved and is still an ongoing issue

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And some of it's more for pacing reasons that felt right at the time (not the idea of "filler to have them keep doing stuff" but more "the characters are doing these things, so let's have the plot hit these beats along the way" and not necessarily realizing that the pacing that worked when 2.2 was the latest patch feels much different when 4.2 is the latest patch).

Quest skip potion [Do you need it?]

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

The HW story actually starts as early as in 2.3 - when we start looking for "Lady Iceheart"

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By that logic, the Heavensward story actually starts right back in the Coerthas story arc (Lv35-40ish), which introduces some important characters and the general 'idea' of Ishgard and its problems.

And then there's the dragoon quests. If you are not yet at Heavensward and intend to play dragoon at some point, this is a good time to do that questline. The Lv30-50 dragoon quests are an early introduction to a character who is involved in the Heavensward MSQ, so if you do it later it will be "out of sequence" as if the Heavensward story hasn't happened yet.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

By that logic, the Heavensward story actually starts right back in the Coerthas story arc (Lv35-40ish), which introduces some important characters and the general 'idea' of Ishgard and its problems.

And then there's the dragoon quests. If you are not yet at Heavensward and intend to play dragoon at some point, this is a good time to do that questline. The Lv30-50 dragoon quests are an early introduction to a character who is involved in the Heavensward MSQ, so if you do it later it will be "out of sequence" as if that story hasn't happened yet.

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Goons don't read... ;)

Anyone that says the 2.x quests should be optional probably forgot about the HW MSQ quests that tie back to many of those events. Y'know, the parts about why you're there alone, and why it's a big deal when hear back about events happening outside Ishgard, the characters you meet back up with. Admittedly, 2.1 is probably the worst of it, but that's just how it goes, when you're coming down from the big Ultima climax. After that, the character/story relevance is decently dense.

Working on a new alt now that for some reason I felt the need to make and level the week before housing was released. I went 1-26 on pug, switched to rogue just because and took that to 50, then unlocked and playing as Sam. All of this while losing no time whatsoever grinding msq, unlock quests, side quests, and first clearing leves and dungeons, not to mention the class book for rogue, and maelstrom, as well as soloing fates. It's been a busy few weeks, my ninja is lvl 56, my sam lvl 54 about to tick 55, and I am just now unlocking Shiva Hard as we log out for 4.21 maintenance. I'm also burning 2-3 hard mode lvl 50 dungeons a day to clear them.

I'm sure my FC is sick of my mantra about too much filler content but that is what it is there is too much, and SE's little cash grab scheme is just insulting but there was a discussion when heavensward came out SE said they wanted players to play through the msq so they wouldn't place the gate earlier so people could bypass. They did the same thing when Stormblood came out they didn't want people to easily bypass. Jump potions though wildly opposed by the playerbase were SE's way out if people hated the msq glut so much they could pay to skip it. When the next expac comes out I wonder what they'll do but I do know I won't be leveling any more new characters as it is I will be lvl 70 Nin, Sam and Monk before I complete SB.

I'd say that as questionable in quality as some quests were, they are offer free experience points, free HQ gear, and gil (all 3 of which I see people take for granted too often.)

Keep in mind these quests did not give any experience points or HQ gear during the ARR patches as they used to be end-game story quests.

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Originally Posted by Yuiipuru

I think only the last 10-something quests are relevant to the story leading up to HW ;;
I was tempted to jump skip it but the finale was pretty amazing to watch!

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I would say youre wrong about the 10 quest estimate. I put the number closer to 40. To cut down on unintentional spoilers, ill S-block the explanation. Within there will be spoilers(ill try to be a bit vague) about the end of the pre-HW quests.

Looking back, the story starts hinting more at an Ishgardian direction after the Ramuh fight. The patch after that(2.4) has you fighting on Ishgards behalf several times. You strike out against heretics, you track them to their lair, you clear a dungeon to find a hidden aetheryte, and you fight the heretics primal Shiva. Along the way you also deal with some Crystal Braves stuff, notably a spy. The next patch(2.5) has you investigate another dungeon because the Ishgardians are worried about what's inside. Along the way you deal with more Crystal Braves stuff and an unexpected offensive from the ascians. And the final patch pre-HW(2.55) has you do a ton of Ishgard stuff, then fight a dragon at their doorstep to keep the city safe. Along the way you go to an eventful dinner party. The last 10 quests would literally be everything after that dragon fight, half of which are more related to dinner.

So counting the quests from those patches, its 43. If you discount the quests from those 3 patches along the way dealing with "side matters", thats still like 27ish. And... possible minor HW spoiler...

some of the people you think that you're done dealing with will pop up again during the HW story.

As for Minfilia, yeah she's annoying. But there are certainly 2 scions i like less then her. I cant imagine anyone here would stick up for Alphinaud or Lyse too strenuously.

I'll defend Alphinaud and Lyse all day. Lyse in particular, who is certainly a victim of Stormblood's writing being rushed, but still far from being a bad character.

(Curiously, I've noticed people using non-EN voices tend to find her less of a problem than people who do. Pure anecdote, though.)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

By that logic, the Heavensward story actually starts right back in the Coerthas story arc (Lv35-40ish), which introduces some important characters and the general 'idea' of Ishgard and its problems.

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Depends on how one defines the story I suppose. The lv35-40 Coerthas quests do set the scene for the later HW story, but are not part of it as I see it.
I consider the HW story to be "The Ending of the Dragonsong War", and that story starts with us looking for Lady Iceheart and ends with The Final Steps of Faith.

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And then there's the dragoon quests. If you are not yet at Heavensward and intend to play dragoon at some point, this is a good time to do that questline. The Lv30-50 dragoon quests are an early introduction to a character who is involved in the Heavensward MSQ, so if you do it later it will be "out of sequence" as if the Heavensward story hasn't happened yet.

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Heh. I am currently taking an alt through the 2.x quests - an alt with Dragoon as her main class for precisely this reason, and because I hear several dialogues in HW are slightly different if you have done the DRG quests already.

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Originally Posted by TThibi

Working on a new alt now that for some reason I felt the need to make and level the week before housing was released. I went 1-26 on pug, switched to rogue just because and took that to 50, then unlocked and playing as Sam. All of this while losing no time whatsoever grinding msq, unlock quests, side quests, and first clearing leves and dungeons, not to mention the class book for rogue, and maelstrom, as well as soloing fates. It's been a busy few weeks, my ninja is lvl 56, my sam lvl 54 about to tick 55, and I am just now unlocking Shiva Hard as we log out for 4.21 maintenance. I'm also burning 2-3 hard mode lvl 50 dungeons a day to clear them.

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If you insist on doing all the level 50 endgame dungeons and sidequests - then of course there is a lot to do. Pretty much all of that is completely optional though.
If you only did the MSQ and the mandatory dungeons you'd be around level 53-54 in your main class (and not past level 50 in any other class) by the time you enter Ishgard - and would probably already have entered Ishgard by now.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

I cant imagine anyone here would stick up for Alphinaud or Lyse too strenuously.

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Unless he becomes spectacularly unlikeable during Stormblood, I'll stick up for Alphinaud. He's got good intentions, he's learning from his mistakes, and I can't think of any reason to not like him right now.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

(Curiously, I've noticed people using non-EN voices tend to find her less of a problem than people who do. Pure anecdote, though.)

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I ended up putting the voices on mute, and a number of characters became less annoying after that...

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

If you only did the MSQ and the mandatory dungeons you'd be around level 53-54 in your main class (and not past level 50 in any other class) by the time you enter Ishgard - and would probably already have entered Ishgard by now.

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My summoner (the class I'm using 'for the story') was Lv54 at the start of Heavensward. I did all the side content along the way, but I think I went into most of the dungeons as white mage so the summoner EXP was mostly from quests.