Hot Take: The MSQ grind is too long and its harmful to expanding friend groups.

Probably triggered people with the title, but the struggle is super real to slog through the literally 200-400 hours of story content to get to max level if you aren't unemployed or a streamer. As a fairly long time player who has had a bunch of friends hop over from other games recently, I've noticed that most of them are washing out and quitting before getting to 80 to join me and my other established friends.

Mostly its the post-2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 patch content MSQ that is the culprit here as those storylines are as long if not longer than each expansion's respective leveling MSQ and you generally don't gain a ton of levels from them, making it feel like you are running around doing menial quests without any significant progression.

As someone who recommended people play the story legit initially, I'm now recommending that my firends buy the skip and watch the cutscenes later, because for my (quite large) friend group, we are batting close to 0 on people making it all the way to shadowbringers.

Suggestion: Add some sort of mode or way for players who hit max level for a specific expansion the ability to "fast track" their way through only the patch content portions of storyline. I.e. its basically the unending journey in that you basically watch all the cutscenes back to back without having to do the fetch quests, dungeons, etc that all take the bulk of the time. Then, when you hit the .zero content for the next expansion, you go back to leveling through it as normal as that still feels pretty good.

Just a bummer to entice my friends over with hopes to raid and do other activities with each other, and have to wait weeks or months for them to slog through the story, if they make it at all.

There is a storyskip if you want to skip to current expansion. /endthread

This is what boosts are for.

If you aren't doing said patch content with them, dungeon, trials, etc, or not doing old raids and stuff as they unlock them, that's kind of on you.

You say you have a large friend group, what's stopping you from doing coil, Alexander, and omega as they get to those points?

Those raids are just as valid as current ones.

Maybe they burn out solely because you are pushing for current end game as the only content worth doing with them

Good suggestions on the story skip, and that is currently what I am advising people to do. however, doing the skip ends up putting you in a position where in order to catch you also have to sit through many hours of just cutscenes, which isn't super engaging. I think leveling through the story is very helpful for learning your class and just picking up various unlocks along the way. That's why this is a middle ground. It still encourages you to sightsee in the relevant expansion content, but fast tracks you through the post-patch content which is where things hit lulls.

And as for me, I haven't said anything to them pressuring them to get to max for the most part, and i've been doing TONS of dungeons (and some low level raids/trials as desired) with them. I think its more than my group is pretty end-game focused, being raiders in other games. So wanting to do the current tier of content is a driver for them. Anyway, I expected to get dismissed for this take and get a lot of "well just boost 4head" responses, but I do feel that "well just boost" isn't a great answer as its kind of one end of two very stark extremes. Either you slog through it all and its several hundreds hours, or you skip it entirely and get dropped into the game kind of clueless. Either experience isn't great.

there is barely any reason to rush to 80 though. what do you have to do there? the newest raid tier? is it really worth to rush or short cut so much content for 4 bosses? you can do glam at lvl 15. treasure maps for groups at lvl 60. you can do rp whereever you can go.
playing wirh their friends? your lvl gets synched down so its no problem to play together. old content doesnt give the best gear anymore? well... is getting gear which is for a short time the best and not needed for anything (except ultimates, which we dont have in every tier) more important than playing together with your lowlvl friends?

i dont know. pls enlighten me why is getting through the story so important?


edit: guess it took me too long to write xD

Just pay 50$ to storyskip and level boost. Simple as that. Just dont complain about the lack of content when the main content of FFXIV is the MSQ

They could roll on preferred servers. This character started as an alt when Mateus had Road to 70 (I rolled him to see revised ARR). I kept him and was close to level 80 coming out of Heavensward so I was steamrolling through quests and able to solo every dungeon up until Ghimlyt Dark. The levels and story flew by.

This is why I’m hoping the new arc after endwalker just starts the player at the new arc. New game + can get people that want the story of the previous arc, and everyone can play together again rather than be scattered throughout a 300+ hour msq.

As others have said, skip potions are designed for what you are talking about. But I have to say, there are things in the Chronicles of a New Era storylines that should not be skipped, because each opens up new dungeons, trials and raids. And some are required for later content. Such as the Ivalice raids in Stormblood, and of course, Crystal Tower for MSQ progression post-Shadowbringers. Just food for thought.