MSQ

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

You said that the root of the problem was to remove most of the post-MSQ quests.

do you know which post-MSQ quests you would NOT remove? in order to maintain the storyline and not leave players confused?

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I cant edit since Im on mobile right now, but thats supposed to say “removed from the MSQ storyline”

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Originally Posted by Alaray

My position's always been that MSQ shouldn't gate the game away in the manner it does, especially when most of it is a drag and, while it's an alright story, it's not going to shatter someone's world to miss it if what they want to do in XIV is located after it.

Like, it's an okay story. It's alright. If someone wants to raid primarily and doesn't care about the narrative, just... let them. Just let people pick an option, or something, that lets them get a massively streamlined story, or just skips it altogether without having to dedicate another chunk of cash for the privilege of not spending 80+ hours clicking on NPCs.

Especially when doing the MSQ is hardly content in and of itself, since it's just a click and point adventure game without anything interesting to do with the games systems and, even when you end up at Thordan with all the build up, the end result is more of a sad joke as your df'd group blows him up in a few minutes and you're back to "click npc, read. Move twenty feet. Click NPC." It's not riveting gameplay, and there's a lot of people who're interested in the gameplay elements that, in XIV, only end up fleshed out at the end game and are miserable to work with before then. I mean, I just go afk on some of the duties on the normal difficulty and somehow win. It's an extremely dull affair.

If the MSQ played like a game and not just the lowest budget movie you could ever ask for, maybe I'd hold a different opinion. But I also don't think the shining feature of a MMO should be the solo player experience, especially when it's more like a solo viewer experience.

Selling a solution to a problem isn't a solution to the problem. At best that's a scam.

And multiple expansions worth of hours to slog through terribly designed quests that promise just about 0 interesting gameplay fun from them is, despite what some people think, a massive turn off to people who do want to play a videogame at the end of the day.

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As someone who enjoys the MSQ's writing (but hates the fact it's completely anti-co-op) and enjoys all sorts of jRPGs where story progression is basically "talk to this person then go where they're pointing" stuff, I think this is the best post in this entire topic.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

And multiple expansions worth of hours to slog through terribly designed quests that promise just about 0 interesting gameplay fun from them is, despite what some people think, a massive turn off to people who do want to play a videogame at the end of the day.

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Fortunately, there are other games that may cater to them. They don't have to change this one to be able to enjoy a game more to their liking.

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Originally Posted by linayar

Fortunately, there are other games that may cater to them. They don't have to change this one to be able to enjoy a game more to their liking.

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XIV could cater to people who don't care for the MSQ despite it being mandatory.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

XIV could cater to people who don't care for the MSQ despite it being mandatory.

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Then good for them as well if they can accept the mandatory MSQ. I'm talking about the people Alaray say is turned off by FFXIV. If that makes them not want to play FFXIV, then there are other games.

If the goal is for the game to become even more popular over time, then at some point the elephant in the room that is the MSQ's will need to be addressed once again.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

If the goal is for the game to become even more popular over time, then at some point the elephant in the room that is the MSQ's will need to be addressed once again.

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I gave my thought on this: move the starting point forward. 6.1 is a good place, let's go to another time bubble and leave the current one behind.

That said, whether it's more popular over time isn't really my concern, though I'd be happy for the devs if it were. As long as there are enough people to continue development and for me to play the content I want, then I'm happy as is.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

If the goal is for the game to become even more popular over time, then at some point the elephant in the room that is the MSQ's will need to be addressed once again.

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And if the data reflects that the MSQ is an impediment to that popularity gain that can't be solved by the current skip system then the dev's will address it. So far however the growth that Shadowbringers gave them seems to lend credence that it isn't such a big issue at this point. It'd also be harder to chunk down the amount of MSQ post 2.5, because ARR's issue was that many of it's quests were there simply to give you a reason to visit it's bloated map. It was basically the MMO equivalent of being put on the trolley at a theme park and being given a tour of the park. Useful mechanically but having no real narrative weight. Their writing philosophy changed after they rightly received backlash for that style of bloated writing, and as of SB there's very few quests you could fully cut without losing something in translation. So the same method cannot be easily used twice.

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Originally Posted by linayar

Fortunately, there are other games that may cater to them. They don't have to change this one to be able to enjoy a game more to their liking.

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This is a pretty terrible non-response.

"Play another game" isn't a response to a critique of the current title, when it can easily offer the solution to players who might be interested in a different aspect of the title since the game isn't just a visual novel. Thanks for trying, I guess.

give players the option to create a raiding character that completely disables anything MSQ related and jumps their character to 80 with some barebones gear in 4 classes, add several checkmarks that they REALLY don't want to do the MSQ to be absolutely sure and disable every side quest, too
they can level up with deep dungeons or just jump to the next level cap once expansions get released