Cutscenes in Multiplayer Content

I have two pieces of feedback related to cutscenes in multiplayer duties.

1) Some multiplayer duties contain long cutscenes, and the ARR trials are particularly egregious, with long press-button-to-advance-dialog scenes. Especially since these cutscenes are usually at the very beginning or very end of the duty, I would love to see them moved out of the multiplayer content, as something you watch before you queue or after you leave. I have heard the latest expansion gets better at this, but that neither makes the game appealing to new players nor helps when older content comes up in roulettes.

2) Change cutscene skipping in duties to a vote-to-skip system, where everyone watches the cutscene unless the entire party votes to skip. Finishing a cutscene to find a boss already half-dead is not a good experience for a new player, and having nothing to look at while others watch cutscenes is not great either.

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Originally Posted by Zatoh

Finishing a cutscene to find a boss already half-dead is not a good experience for a new player

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So do the polite thing and wait for them and wait for them in the very few dungeons where it is an issue, or else the devs may eventually decide to enforce cutscene viewing in Toto-Rak and the Stone Vigil like they did for the ARR finale dungeons.

The "have a vote on skipping cutscenes" is a perennial suggestion, and the answer is no, because that will just lead to some people pressuring newbies to skip or voting to kick them if they don't, and we'll be back to the wild old days of them having to choose between skipping the entire story in the dungeons or risk getting abandoned.

In the grand scheme of the game, you really don't spend much time at all waiting for people.

In the grand scheme of this game, I spend a LOT of time waiting for people to watch cutscenes. I also spend a lot of time watching cutscenes when playing duties for the first time. I feel bad making people wait for me.

I would also like an easy way to watch cutscenes if someone else is watching them, because right now I have to choose between (1) using a setting that automatically skips cutscenes I've already seen, so I have nothing to look at while other people watch those scenes, or (2) not using that setting and having people get angry at me when I literally cannot skip the cutscene quickly enough. Additionally, with that second option, I will not know if someone else is watching the cutscene until after I skip, at which point it is too late to watch.

It is unfortunate that some people pressure new players to skip cutscenes. That said, to my knowledge, this game has never had a vote-to-skip system. The system you describe is the system we currently have.

In my very first dungeon playing this game, the boss was half-dead when I finished the cutscene. It happened to me many times after that. I have also waited for the sprouts and watched fellow players not wait. Heck, some people have told me they have rushed in before realizing people were watching cutscenes, which is currently an easy mistake to make. This is a problem. I think it is worth addressing.

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Originally Posted by Zatoh

It is unfortunate that some people pressure new players to skip cutscenes. That said, to my knowledge, this game has never had a vote-to-skip system. The system you describe is the system we currently have.

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There was never vote-to-skip but there was a great deal of rushing off during the cutscene-heavy dungeons and leaving newbies miles behind.

If you're playing a dungeon for the first time and want to watch cutscenes comfortably and not feel guilty, do it with the duty support NPCs.

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Originally Posted by Zatoh

In the grand scheme of this game, I spend a LOT of time waiting for people to watch cutscenes. I also spend a lot of time watching cutscenes when playing duties for the first time. I feel bad making people wait for me.

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If it's a duty that's included in the MSQ roulette, everyone who has joined the duty through the roulette is being compensated for the additional time spent on cutscenes (bonus rewards are much bigger than usual). Making the cutscenes skippable in those duties will lead back to what Iscah mentioned.

I agree that the beginning cutscenes for the 4man trials should be moved to before the duty is entered. The ending cutscenes aren't a problem because players are free to leave at anytime once the boss is defeated.

If you're thinking about cutscenes in Crystal Tower, most of them really aren't that long. That players are able to defeat a boss before a cutscene finishes is due to massive power creep that the player base has been asking SE to address for a long time. Hopefully something will be done one day.

there never should be cutscenes before a boss in multiplayer content, FF14 fails spectacular at this concept. You are just making people wait and annoyed.
Sometimes the cutscenes before a boss are longer than the actual fight, that is just ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Zatoh

I also spend a lot of time watching cutscenes when playing duties for the first time. I feel bad making people wait for me.

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You shouldn't feel bad about that. You have every right to experience that content. I don't mind; I'll wait for you. And I've never seen anyone complain in a dungeon about waiting on a first-timer to watch a cutscene; if I did, I'd tell him to shut up (although I'd try to word it a bit more politely than that). One thing I have seen, though, is... Player A starts to move toward the next fight while Player B is watching a cutscene, then Player C says, "Hold up! Player B is in a cutscene," and Player A responds, "Oh, sorry; I'll wait, then."

We have a good community here, and very few people view it as anything worse than a trivial, quibbling, minor little inconvenience; it's just the cost of doing business, really.

As for me, I got to experience that content, and I'll support other people's right to experience it any day of the week. I'm not saying this to show how brave and considerate I am or anything; I'll probably never have to back up my words here with action, because people just don't complain about waiting on cutscenes.

The only cutscenes I really hate are the mid-fight cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by Zatoh

In the grand scheme of this game, I spend a LOT of time waiting for people to watch cutscenes. I also spend a lot of time watching cutscenes when playing duties for the first time. I feel bad making people wait for me.

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I personally never mind waiting for people to watch their cutscene when it's their first time. What I dislike is the impatient people that don't let first timers watch their cutscenes and just say "watch them at the inn after". Watching at the inn is not the same. It's already been spoiled.