Main Scenario Quests: Suggestion/Question

If this has already been discussed, sorry! I keep up with forums veeeeery poorly.

So FFXIV has a cool concept of allowing players to pretty much do everything on one character. However, I’ve always enjoyed having multiple characters. That’s my choice, and not everyone plays that way. But I know I’m not alone, especially on heavy-RP servers like Balmung, where it’s not uncommon for people to have 2 or 3 alts that they enjoy playing regularly.

So my question is: are there any plans to compact the Main Scenario quests? With the Au Ra on the horizon, I was absolutely in love with the idea of an Au Ra alt. Then I remembered that I have FIVE main scenario “patches” to go through with about 15-20 quests in each one to even look at the Expert roulette on a new character. I have two alts that I play. That means I’ve gone (by choice, of course) through these 5 Main Scenario patches twice, and an Au Ra would make a third time. That’s a lot of dialogue skipping.

The patches aren’t hard to get through if you dedicate time to skip through it for a day or two. But most people with jobs/etc can’t do that, so getting through the patches is spread out over a few weeks. There is literally nothing worse than coming home to play on your pretty new alt and realizing you still have 80 Main Scenario quests to go through before you can touch the Expert roulette. For instance, my PvE partner and I both made DRGs at the same time a while ago. Because he mostly played on weekends, that meant we couldn't look forward to roulette together because he had to spend the 2 or 3 hours he did have doing thirty million Main Scenario quests.

Tl;dr: Is there any talk about compacting all of the Main Scenario patches in the future? Maybe make all the Primals a relatively simple unlock like CT quests? Untie Expert roulette dungeons from the main story? Even better, make the non-vanilla Main Scenario quests “bind on account” – so if you have done the whole thing on one character, any new alts also don’t have to trudge through a pile of quests all over again. Preeetty sure no one’s going to miss Cape Westwind and its four hour wait times.

I think that the ability to do everything on one character is the main reason why devs shouldn't care about reworking old content. The thing you are suggesting would change the experience for new players.

EDIT: The only good idea which wouldn't take the experience we had from new players would be the ability to choose something like "skip all story quests till 2.5" while making alt character. But that would take too much work and programming and I believe we need the devs doing other stuff than that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moggy

Even better, make the non-vanilla Main Scenario quests “bind on account” – so if you have done the whole thing on one character, any new alts also don’t have to trudge through a pile of quests all over again. Preeetty sure no one’s going to miss Cape Westwind and its four hour wait times.

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I would love that, honestly. I made an alt on another server so I could play with friends there and I am not looking forward to having to go through the entire Main Scenario all over again just so that I can unlock everything on my alt. It's not that I mind leveling, it's that I would prefer to choose how I do it instead of being forced to do the story again. And I say this as someone who LIKES the story.

I don't think the initial experience needs changing and I don't think the OP is suggesting that either. First time through I read all the text, watched all the cut scenes and generally enjoyed the story. That was my first character back about a month after the game opened. Now I have two alts which were also required to push through the same story quests and a fourth I just don't have the hear to do it for. I think the way things are for your first run are great, perfectly fine. The issue arises for those of us who do not want our huge manly tank running about in healer robes and so we make a new character.

More or less, after three runs through, I feel that it should be the same if I jump to a new character as it is if I have a 2nd class on an existing one. Especially considering how long the patches have started to make that journey and the impending release of new races which encourage the making of alts.