**SPOILERS** Did anyone else find this new zone to be a complete slog? **SPOILERS**

So for the first time ever, I actually have skipped cutscenes in FF14 because the story has become so dreadfully boring and dull. What zone am I talking about? Elpis. This entire section completely derails the momentum of the MSQ and once again presents us with a zone that really no one will have a reason to return to later just like Tempest.

I feel the story from this could have easily been truncated into 4-5 MSQ quests and didn't need an ENTIRE ZONE dedicated to it. The pace of EW had been great up until now, but my god what a slog.

I completely agree. The pacing of this expansion has been all over the place and the tone has been a rollercoaster. I am just skipping every conversation at this point in Elpis because I truly, honestly, do not care at all about any of this and I want to actually play a game, not just read text and watch cutscenes.

Almost every level I've gained has been through watching cutscenes. I love a good story, but this is a video game SE.

I LOVE ELPIS! Because i like time traveling into the past and see how and why some things happened. I like it in movies too.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

I completely agree. The pacing of this expansion has been all over the place and the tone has been a rollercoaster. I am just skipping every conversation at this point in Elpis because I truly, honestly, do not care at all about any of this and I want to actually play a game, not just read text and watch cutscenes.

Almost every level I've gained has been through watching cutscenes. I love a good story, but this is a video game SE.

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I have no problem with a lot of cutscenes and I feel the voice acting has been excellent as well as direction, but Endwalker has a serious pacing issue. Elpis, while I understand is meant to help flesh out the past in order to save the future, they couldn't have done it in a more dull way. The zone is gorgeous, yes, but the way the story is being presented is completely uninteresting. Many of the MSQ quests in this area don't even contribute much to the main plot, they are just used to justify why this area needed a zone to begin with. As I said, I've never skipped anything plotwise in this game but this area I just want to be done and over with. Actually dozed off last night while in it.

Elpis is a dream come true story arc (and very important moment) for a lot of people including me.

So I respectfully disagree.

No Elpis is one of the best zones they ever made.

After they teased the silly friendship dynamic between Emet Selch and Hythlodaeus in the Tales from the Shadow stories, I was rather elated to see it in practice.

The pacing slowing down at times felt natural to me because we ended up in multiple "what now" situations where we don't know what's coming, what we're dealing with or how to deal with it, so taking time to learn what's going on and contextualize things only makes sense from a writing standpoint.

Pacing was the only issue for me in this zone, specifically. Otherwise, it’s great. If any I don’t wish them to truncate the quests further.

I respectfully disagree.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

So for the first time ever, I actually have skipped cutscenes in FF14 because the story has become so dreadfully boring and dull. What zone am I talking about? Elpis. This entire section completely derails the momentum of the MSQ and once again presents us with a zone that really no one will have a reason to return to later just like Tempest.

I feel the story from this could have easily been truncated into 4-5 MSQ quests and didn't need an ENTIRE ZONE dedicated to it. The pace of EW had been great up until now, but my god what a slog.

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Elpis is actually one of my favourite zones of the whole expansion. I love the rounding out it gave certain characters. It was a lovely tale and it is when I started to love this expansion.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I have no problem with a lot of cutscenes and I feel the voice acting has been excellent as well as direction, but Endwalker has a serious pacing issue. Elpis, while I understand is meant to help flesh out the past in order to save the future, they couldn't have done it in a more dull way. The zone is gorgeous, yes, but the way the story is being presented is completely uninteresting. Many of the MSQ quests in this area don't even contribute much to the main plot, they are just used to justify why this area needed a zone to begin with. As I said, I've never skipped anything plotwise in this game but this area I just want to be done and over with. Actually dozed off last night while in it.

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I agree with you on this. I also like cutscenes. I like story. I loved the last expansion and my favorite games of all time are all JRPGs.

The pacing here is so jarring that every time I started to get grabbed by the story and interested, the rug was pulled out from under me and I went back to talking to people or running errands like the apocalypse didn't just begin. While I understand why others are saying they love Elpis for the adorable little story, I feel it would make an EXCELLENT optional side-story that everyone can play when they feel like it. Having the entire story come to a grinding hault while you play a bit of Back to the Future just really killed every ounce of excitement they built up for me with the Final Days beginning.

It's like watching Star Wars: A New Hope and in the middle of the attack on the Death Star they just cut to the first 30 minutes of The Phantom Menace. Sure, it is relevant to how we got to that point in the story, but couldn't we tell this on it's own when it isn't detracting from the pacing of the adventure we are currently on?