Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

Shouldn't skip -- Just trim out the fat in the Main Scenario. It has a lot of what I like to call "busy work" that detracts from the story.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

MMM what I think they should at least do is, reduce the required exp for leveling up in ARR and HW to a magnitude that solely doing main scenario quest and a few side quest would be enough.

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Well I haven't gotten to the 45+ area yet, where things used to be more difficult for leveling up, but so far ARR leveling has been mostly just doing MSQ and the dungeons within with just some sidequests thrown in. From what I read a bit on threads here as well people who also have HW before getting to that content tend to be quite a few levels above 50 by the time they hit it. Given that exp gains will almost certainly be increased for HW MSQ quests when SB comes out, leveling probably won't be that much of an issue. Just whether or not said new players want to go through the whole story to get to SB, followed by the ACTUAL level grind.

Well, that 100 page goal is almost breached~ So fahn. Back on topic though, I don't feel they need to change anything about how they do things. I'd rather not see a level skip potion without some trade off. Inability to access Amy instances below the level they jumped to?

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Originally Posted by Mihana

The main problem with it all is just there's SOOO much backtracking and menial tasks between the really important stuff.

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You're asking SE to streamline away the story. The story isn't just the highlight bits. It's also about how you get to those highlight bits. Those other quests (or most of them anyway) can't be moved off to sidequests, because they wouldn't make sense or serve their purpose there.

It's an essential part of the design (of most RPGs, certainly all FFs) that you're going to need stuff from NPCs who will only help you if you do or get something they need. Objectives are chained together so that in order to accomplish objective A you'll need an item you can get through objective B, but to reach the area for that you'll need to do objective C, and so on, all so that you can eventually put those together into achieving the main objective you started with.

If those quests didn't gate the following part you're trying to reach, there'd be no point in them. They exist in order to make it take the effort of doing them in order to get where you want. (They even repeatedly joke about the effect in-game during the long lead up to the first Titan trial. That whole section would be completely ruined if they shortened it any.)

Did SE overdo it a bit in the 2.1 - 2.55 patches? I don't know. Some people seem to think so. But even if SE removed or shortened a quest or two, it wouldn't shorten the process enough to make much difference to the time it takes to go through them, and any more than that could end up butchering the storyline.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Y
If those quests didn't gate the following part you're trying to reach, there'd be no point in them. They exist in order to make it take the effort of doing them in order to get where you want. (They even repeatedly joke about the effect in-game during the long lead up to the first Titan trial. That whole section would be completely ruined if they shortened it any.)

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I don't know about "completely ruined". I think "completely less annoying" would be more accurate.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

I don't know about "completely ruined". I think "completely less annoying" would be more accurate.

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Actually, "annoyance" is, in a fashion, part of the intent of that series of quests. It's the old secret test trope, where the hero is made to do a number of seemingly irrelevant tasks, only to learn later that they all had a hidden purpose. In this case, the folks responsible for putting Titan down before are testing the Warrior of Light to make sure they have what it takes to bring down Titan before they are willing to assist the hero in reaching the Primal, believing (possibly rightly) that sending a hero without the chops to get the job done would be akin to murdering the poor sap.

Many heroes, put through secret tests of this sort, DO become irritable and annoyed (think Daniel-san from the original Karate Kid movie, who eventually lost his patience with Mr. Miyagi making him do all those chores - only to learn that the repetitive motions were intended to prepare his body for the karate moves he was to learn). So if you did, as well, you're playing right into the trope, as intended!

I won't say that the Titan questline was the most graceful way I've ever seen this trope handled (ARR's storyline was clumsy in many ways, not just here), but the various tasks you were sent on for that quest were not meaningless. They had a storytelling purpose, and simply removing them would defeat that purpose.

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Originally Posted by Warkupo

Shouldn't skip -- Just trim out the fat in the Main Scenario. It has a lot of what I like to call "busy work" that detracts from the story.

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Even then, developers clearly took that feedback into consideration in Heavensward. 3.1 to 3.4 they took out a lot of the small menial tasks and got straight to the main parts of the story. If you were to do the patch 3.1 MSQ to 3.4's right now, you could get it done in one to two nights. The longest parts about them are the cutscenes and I think a few dungeons. They also took the primal related quests and made them separate from the main story which was a good idea also.

@Velhart: Which is on one side nice for the people that catch up but I found the 3.x patch stories to be way to short. I am not sure if this was done because of the complaining or for other reasons but quite some story points felt way too rushed (Ul'dah, WoD)imo.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

@Velhart: Which is on one side nice for the people that catch up but I found the 3.x patch stories to be way to short. I am not sure if this was done because of the complaining or for other reasons but quite some story points felt way too rushed (Ul'dah, WoD)imo.

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If you go back to 2.0. If you cut out the primal fights and small menial tasks, then they are roughly the same length from 2.1 to 2.4. ARR might be a tad longer. It is the trial fights, dungeons, and various small tasks that made the 2.1-2.4 quests longer. It is still to be determined though since 3.5 and 3.55 will likely be very long since it is the gateway to Stormblood.