Question about the MSQ

Hello

To give you some context: I'm a returning player after two failed attempts due to the looong questline at the end of A Realm Reborn, which had discouraged me.

For my third attempt, I was finally able to complete it, and here I am in Heavensward, where I've just completed a dungeon, The Aerie, and I am in my MSQ with Level 56 quests.

My current feelings: I think that a maximum of 30% of the quests consist of objectives where my character actually has to do something (find an item, kill monsters, complete a dungeon). And the rest is running around talking to an NPC who says two sentences, then a second who says one, then a third who says two more, and I go back to the first...

And often, in these cutscenes, my character has no effect on the unfolding of what's happening, their "contributions" being limited to either explaining what just happened (just the character's lips moving) or saying "yes" while nodding their head... To the point where I'm thinking it would be fun to create a character named Noddy The-mute (obviously, a Lalafell :-)

In short, from the quests (which some call "the fedex suite") at the end of ARR until the beginning of Heavensward, the MSQ requires almost nothing from me, so in a way, if it were a text-based game, it wouldn't change much...

Now, I'm not saying that the game doesn't have a LOT of truly satisfying features. I'm ONLY talking about the MSQ here, and I wanted to hear from people who have completed the MSQ to see if they share my feelings, and if so, is the answer : "well, the game is designed like that, and the MSQ will be of the same caliber throughout each expansion."

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

Honestly, you're playing an MMO, and as much as the game amps up the caliber of its sotrytelling compared to others in the genre, you're ultimately stuck with the same 'verbs'. Put short: you will always be getting told to kill ten rats, it's just that here you're gonna be given a really good reason why, by a character who's fairly well-realized as a person.

There are some more elaborate quest setups later on; probably the biggest of those is that Stormblood introduces quests where you play as other characters, which is either the best or worst idea depending on how good you are at adapting your playstyle. In terms of your own character's storytelling, you do get more elaborate presence in cutscenes as time goes on, even including some job-specific stuff, but that's admittedly few and far between; turns out, it's really hard to make cutscenes appropriately account for 20+ different jobs! And while your character never really stops being Nods McPunchpalm, they do their utmost to find the most they can stretch what characterization is there, provide varied dialog options (including conditional ones that acknowledge if you've done certain quests, for example) to make your character feel like as much of a person as they reasonably can; in particular, Shadowbringers pushes that pretty far.

So, put directly: Yes, the caliber of the story broadly improves in all the things you're wanting to see more out of, but at the same time, yes the game is designed like that.

OK, I hear you... Then there is "hope" (though I feel it gets better but not really that much better)

Note that other MMO are doing extremely better at narrative involving the character (I think for example SWTOR where you can even impact the way story goes by choosing)...

It's so frustrating to me that FF14 set the bar so low on that topic where on so many other the game is just GREAT. And the story is nice, but I'm so bored reading text or watching cutscenes that I'm not involved even when an emotional event occurs...

Personally, I'm fine with it. There's certain types of story that can do well with a blank-slate player avatar, but the sort of stories that XIV tells is not one of them; that's better done with others taking the lead.

If you want to play SWTOR instead, nobody's stopping you.

it's worth mentioning that the story gets MUCH better once you get past stormblood, but even before then it's good.

ARR is basically the longest context bomb known to man, because it assumes you have no idea about anything (consider this is some people's first FF, their first MMO, or both at the same time) but yeah, the quest design is not very out there when you strip the lore from it. Later on they add different kinds of objectives to shake things up a little (taking an NPC with you somewhere, wearing a disguise, looking for something from very far away and sometimes shooting at it, sneaking up on an NPC and following them without being caught, there was also a neat little puzzle section in the latest patch of DT and your WoL becomes more involved in emotional cutscenes) but they're still few and far between. The good news is that they continue adding more over time, and there more there are of course the more often different kinds of objective show up!


The story also begins picking up speed from ARR onwards. I personally really enjoyed HW, so I hope you like it too. This is where all the context they've been throwing at you for the entire base game begins to shine. If you feel like you're getting a bit burned out from playing errand girl, I used to take a break from MSQ running some roulettes or gathering for a bit back when I was a sprout.


TLDR: Quests become a bit more varied over time and cutscenes more detailed, yes, but the whole point of the MSQ is the lore/story rather than the objectives themselves. The story starts picking up speed from this point onwards, so I hope you enjoy it!

Maybe this game is not for you and that's okay. By the level 56 quest you should have learned about the war between Ishgard and the dragons. Are you interested in knowing the truth behind the war? Are you invested in wanting to stop this war? Are you interested in understanding why Estinien and Ysayle are acting the way they act? If no, then maybe it's just not your kind of story.