ARR Needs Significant Cuts to the MSQ

I think it's too late...
Cutting a little wouldn't be that bad, but the reality is all players from 2013 onwards have had to put up with ARR, it's like a rite of passage now.


It's too late.

Personally agree that MSQ needs cuts or a choice in the very least. The skips for ARR are like $5. If I hadn't skipped, I'd have not stayed in the game.

What I did do was go back and do ARR following my skip. I don't regret it at all, which is blasphemy, I know, but again - it really isn't compelling for new players and every person I introduce or hear is introduced leaves. My experience actually doing ARR was eh. I like the idea of growing from virtually nothing, but I just didn't get that sense with how ARR was done. Either way, you're the WoL and that's often mentioned, you can't escape the 'chosen one' narrative no matter how many fetch quests you do.

The general response is: 'this isn't the game for them' but that's really not how you keep new players...and again.

You can buy the skips.

The fact that you can, and that's what seems like the go-to these days, is a bit ridiculous and shows a need for change. You can argue all day people are horrible for skipping/this is a story game/build up but most I talk to outside of the forums don't swear up and down that ARR is the best thing ever like many in the community when stuff like this is brought up seem to.

I dunno.

It just seems like there really does need to be some sort of change, or the game won't retain many new players. Which is fine for many, sure, but having options is better. The less people interested in the game, the less it will grow. The less for long time players, therefore. I don't think the necessity of skipping or 'well you can't handle ARR go play a different game then' is great. Yes - I know it's story based (though Dawntrail really set fire to that with how badly it was written...). But trying to compel new players based on how great the story is won't work with how much of a bore ARR is.

And if they never make changes for new players given community feedback, that's fine, people can keep just skipping with $5 I suppose (again, not the best solution but at the moment the only one other than doing ARR - and someone bored to death and not hooked on the game at all won't do it.)

My biggest gripe is the fact that you also need to do that and all the rest of MSQ on alts, which is ridiculous. Those who have done the story on a main shouldn't have to buy skips or deal with doing it all over again, which takes forever per character even if you click through everything.

Sigh.

Either way - I do think there needs to be changes or something, but that attitude seems to be a minority one. Maybe not cut anything for folks who do want to do it, but give more options in general, variety, etc

In WoW you could pick what expansion to start in and level in. With how linear (unfortunately...) XIV story is, though, I don't think that'd work either. Gods, it'd be nice if there was more variety. Though the side quest content and lore bits are amazing, wish that stuff was integrated more or could be part of the 'options'. No idea how any of that would work aside from a massive rework though, which is most definitely not in the cards.

I guess the biggest thing would be less strictness and more variety which...again, with the story being strictly linear, that'd make that want nigh impossible.

I think I'm getting closer to the end of A Realm Reborn (waiting on The Praetorium right now), but while I wait I saw this thread. As a new player, the Company of Heroes seemed like a slog. Also, there's more than a few cutscenes that could just be regular dialogue with a character. They don't do any special animation whatsoever.

And the voice acting is terrible. Please tell me it gets better later 😭

I wouldn't know where to cut things because I don't know what's important to the story or not at this point, and it's not like ARR is the only part of the game where the plot gets tiresome enough that it might bore people once they get there. Half of Stormblood and most of Shadowbringers were a slog for me personally, not that you could coax new people into playing the game based on the content of an expansion without spoiling things.

That said, gutting the MSQ too much (or allowing new players to just auto-skip everything to level 100) just raises the question if some people even want to play an RPG or care about it being Final Fantasy at all when it seems they just want a raid simulator with zero cutscenes. For all the claims of "my friends got bored in ARR and quit FOREVER" I can't imagine them sticking around for long either if they could jump straight into Dawntrail with no context or attachment to the world and characters and all they have to do is roulettes because they were made to fly past every single side quest, even the blue ones. (Unless the idea is to conveniently guide them to the stuff that the veteran player wants more warm bodies for and nothing else.)

Not to say the veteran-guiding-newbie experience is great of course... what with the inability to stay partied during solo duties, not being able to use NPCs as filler in group content, Crystal Tower being mandatory, and tutorials and explanations for mechanics being so lacking that you have to handhold a lot, but I do sometimes wonder if veterans just do an awful job of actually selling the game to their other friends. If you told me "oh yeah, the whole game SUCKS until you can Savage raid at max level" I wouldn't bloody stick around past my first free month either.

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Originally Posted by synthwev

And the voice acting is terrible. Please tell me it gets better later ������

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As soon as you step into Heavensward, the entire voice cast changes, it can actually be a little jarring if you are playing through without break, because it causes some characters to change voices between cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by synthwev

I think I'm getting closer to the end of A Realm Reborn (waiting on The Praetorium right now), but while I wait I saw this thread. As a new player, the Company of Heroes seemed like a slog. Also, there's more than a few cutscenes that could just be regular dialogue with a character. They don't do any special animation whatsoever.

And the voice acting is terrible. Please tell me it gets better later ������

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If you want great voice acting, you can switch the cutscene audio language to Japanese without it affecting the text. They do recast all the English voices in Heavensward, but it's still pretty rough in terms of casting and direction in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

If we start trimming too much from the MSQ, then don't we remove the player's immersion from the world where said story actually takes place in?

Sure some stuff is not important, but it gives it the extra flavoring doesn't it?

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If that story segment is actually pertinent to the world building then I would be inclined to agree... But there are still a good portion of quests which don't really build on the world or the characters inside, so the amount of immersion actually lost from the world would be very insignificant.

and if the quests are purely there to serve as flavoring and nothing more, then they really should be side quests rather than part of the main scenario, that way you respect player time, whilst still providing an avenue for people to 'immerse'... Plus, it's well and good talking about immersion, but a lot of people still quit well before the story actually starts getting you immersed properly

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

If that story segment is actually pertinent to the world building then I would be inclined to agree... But there are still a good portion of quests which don't really build on the world or the characters inside, so the amount of immersion actually lost from the world would be very insignificant.

and if the quests are purely there to serve as flavoring and nothing more, then they really should be side quests rather than part of the main scenario, that way you respect player time, whilst still providing an avenue for people to 'immerse'... Plus, it's well and good talking about immersion, but a lot of people still quit well before the story actually starts getting you immersed properly

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NPCs are part of the world though. Silly useless quests are part of the world, you're an Adventurer after all, not the Hero (yet). The MSQ in ARR is setting up your Adventuring Journey first, and then the main threats. My worry is the streamlining of the story just diluting the whole thing in a "Are we at the good part yet?" impatient fashion. I know they've previously cut "useless" bits of ARR that were initially just added character-tidbits.

ARR is the base game, the set-up that leads to catharsis later. The pacing could be better in certain areas sure, but outright cutting some pieces just to make the whole thing go faster is a mistake.

I wouldn't mind them redubbing ARR with the current English cast so the game is consistent that way.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

NPCs are part of the world though. Silly useless quests are part of the world, you're an Adventurer after all, not the Hero (yet). The MSQ in ARR is setting up your Adventuring Journey first, and then the main threats. My worry is the streamlining of the story just diluting the whole thing in a "Are we at the good part yet?" impatient fashion. I know they've previously cut "useless" bits of ARR that were initially just added character-tidbits.

ARR is the base game, the set-up that leads to catharsis later. The pacing could be better in certain areas sure, but outright cutting some pieces just to make the whole thing go faster is a mistake.

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At level 20 after defeating Ifrit you are a hero. Now stop useless fetch quests entirely here and focus solely on the main thing.