Feedback from new player about MSQ

I played when the game first launched for a week or two and quit but just came back and have leveled 1-51 so far and have completed the main storyline of the base game. I'm pretty disappointed. It feels like this could be a great game, but a few of the choices make it frustrating for a new player.

1. There was entirely too many pointless quests in the main story line that you're *required* to complete. The story itself I enjoyed, but there was entirely too much running around for no reason and too many /dance for 10 soldiers to cheer them up type quests. If the main storyline would have been reduced to the 30-40 quests that actually furthered the story it would have been amazing. Change the stupid quests to optional side quests and leave only the ones that further the main story in the MSQ line and this would be amazing.

2. Gear/level scaling is broken at lvl 50. I played warrior and had quick queues. Dungeons at low levels were stupid easy, but that's like most games. What really frustrated me was as soon as I hit lvl 50 and reached the very end of the MSQ line. Dungeons were finally starting to become fun and engaging 40+ but soon as you hit 50 and you start doing the dungeons where you face the villains the game has been building up to this entire time, you get matched with max level players who are literally running through the entire dungeon 1 shotting everything. The lvl 20 dungeon boss fights were by far more challenging than the lvl 50 final bosses. I literally jumped around in circles trying to kill myself on the last ultima weapon boss and couldn't do it. This was extremely anti-climatic and it shouldn't have been.

3. The voice acting is distracting. Out of the 100 quests it seemed like about 10 or so had voice acting in it. Which would have been alright if those were all like the most important parts of the story or something, but it seemed like someone just randomly picked them out of a hat. There was like 10 cut scenes with Cid in it before you hear his voice. Would it have really been *that much* more to voice act all the main characters?

Overall, the game felt slow to get started, but then started building momentum and I started to really enjoy it some where around high 30's low 40's, then was ultimately disappointed at what should have been the most exciting part. This is not a very good way to sell someone a starter addition then disappoint them right before they should be deciding to buy the expansions.

Everything gets better later on, they are working on trimming the ARR stuff, MSQ got faster for the most part and they did more voice acting, just wait till you reach the 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 parts - especially the latest was really nice.

Yes the scaling is broken, bc it gets adjusted for every new expension and on lv 50 you jump from lv 50 to ilvl 130 max so there is a huge power gap. Its the same on 60/70 and 80 as from the x.0 till x.5 patches only the ilvl rises.


Just give it a chance, try to enjoy it, itll be better^^

ARR can be a massive slog to get through and for most newer players, one that isn't worth it. I totally understand that. I have three active characters at end-game content (Two on Primal, one on Crystal, with another Stormblood character on Chaos) and getting them through ARR is incredibly rough for how slow it is and ultimately how boring it is comparatively. It would be nice to see some of the older content get some treatment to make them more enjoyable but I don't see that happening.

However, once you get past ARR it does get significantly better. The higher level you are the more skills you get, and most jobs feel very complete at level 70 (there are a couple that have a core playstyle at 60 as well), and the story does ramp up as you progress through the expansions. I highly recommend trying out the game through HW/SB, as ARR is not an accurate representation of how the game plays at level 80 in Shadowbringers, or at least looking at some gameplay at level 80 :).

you pretty much finished it just before they were going to reveal their revamp of the ARR questline in 5.3. But i'm glad to say you will enjoy it much more after this point.

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Originally Posted by Napkin

Overall, the game felt slow to get started, but then started building momentum and I started to really enjoy it some where around high 30's low 40's, then was ultimately disappointed at what should have been the most exciting part. This is not a very good way to sell someone a starter addition then disappoint them right before they should be deciding to buy the expansions.

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Keep on playing-- I promise you, the MSQ gets much MUCH more exciting as you begin Heavensward and progress onward. So does the voice acting-- it improves by leaps and bonds from 3.0 moving forward-- and just wait till you get to Shadowbringers.

The ARR quests were indeed an utter drudgery to complete and it irritated everyone-- and the Devs have already been making great strides to condense the number of quests; exactly as Kuroka mentioned above. Understand that the Dev team had just relaunched the entire game with AAR and were still testing out many many various things-- this is one of the reasons why Heavensward was such a success because they had finally learned how to fine tune several aspects of the game.

As for the "easy" level 50 dungeons you have experienced, that is to be expected-- especially since most of those dungeons are now five or six years old and their difficulty has been greatly eased in order to assist newer players to progress through them without much hindrance. Its always very bad business to frustrate new players.

Besides, you weren't here when entire parties and/or alliances were repeatedly wiping to Ultima at Praetorium or Behemoth at Crystal Tower-- now players burn them down within 2 to 3 minutes. And don't even get me started with the era when less than 10% of the player base could get past Titan Hard mode just so they could unlock First Coil of Bahamut.

As I said, keep playing and enjoy the game-- welcome back.

...While I agree that 2.0 story drags a bit and has a lot of "meh" quests, I am happy that they are going to revamp it a bit soon.

......now if they'll only revamp the whole moogle part of Heavensward....

About the level 50 dungeons, that's something that'll happen as you reach level cap content (50, 60, 70, 80.) It's because the patch sat there for a couple years having item level go up without a corresponding equip level. If you would LIKE to make them a challenge though, see about using the party finder to recruit willing folks instead of the duty finder, and set the "minimum ilvl" option in the duty finder (make sure to mention in the party description that you're doing this.) This will set everyone to the intended power for the duty.

When do the epilogue quests end?? I killed Ultima weapon and now I'm finding someones adoptive mother and it's dragging on for too long. It feels like a chore that won't end. I've had to invest almost 100 hours on the promise that "it gets better" but I feel burnt out already. I want to sit back and enjoy it but my sub will run out before I even get to Heavensward and I am in no mood to sub again if it means I have to grind more MSQ quests.

I don't mean to be so negative either but just when it was getting really good and enjoyable.. it went spiraling down to a slog.

It really is the slowest part. If you were a 1.0 player, the part you are at would be more meaningful, she's a character from 1.0.

But for you, you just gotta soldier on. It gets better towards the end, I promise

That's the section they're (apparently) making significant changes to for cutting down quest bloat. There are unfortunately a lot of small pointless quests in that section of gameplay, but mixed with some really important character introductions and plot points. Hopefully they will tighten it up a lot and improve the pacing.

There's always a long section of story inbetween the credits of a main game and the start of the next one - two years of episodic storytelling in five or six chapters, basically. The expansions are better on the pacing and interesting story.

Also, a heads-up for some things that are optional at the point where you are but become required later: the three "hard mode" primal trials against Ifrit, Titan and Garuda need to be completed before you can progress to the final chapter of the post-ARR MSQ, and the currently-optional Crystal Tower questline (starting with "Legacy of Allag" in Revenant's Toll) is set to become required as of patch 5.3 but is better done at this point for story continuity.

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Originally Posted by Alexovsky

When do the epilogue quests end?? I killed Ultima weapon and now I'm finding someones adoptive mother and it's dragging on for too long. It feels like a chore that won't end. I've had to invest almost 100 hours on the promise that "it gets better" but I feel burnt out already. I want to sit back and enjoy it but my sub will run out before I even get to Heavensward and I am in no mood to sub again if it means I have to grind more MSQ quests.

I don't mean to be so negative either but just when it was getting really good and enjoyable.. it went spiraling down to a slog.

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Finding someones adoptive mother... you mean Minfilia asking you to find F'lhaminn? Or is this another mother figure im not remembering? Because youve found F'lhaminn before you finish the first 3 quests after Ultima Weapon. Yes, that is a lull in the story but 3 quests is tiring of it fairly quickly. As was mentioned, these are the patch-line(2.1-2.55) quests for ARR. There is relative peace. The threat of the empire is a distant one for now. The scions look to stabilize their position in the world, the alliance needs to decide if its still necessary and expand its position if it is, everyone is interested in opening up Ishgard, and the warrior of light has a few problems to deal with along the way(some minor, some major). By design this starts out slow(every X.1 patch is fairly slow - we just had a major climax in the story afterall). The story stays fairly low for the first third of the patchline(it sets up a lot of story, but the payoff isnt immediate or apparent right away). At about the 1/3 point, youre dealing with the sylphs again(a Ramuh sighting in the forest?). From there til the end things start to accelerate. Events become bigger, trouble more obvious, and Ishgard really starts to take the center stage. By the end theres a second climax that hits as hard(harder for some players) as the Ultima Weapon one, and then the gates of Ishgard open and you get to experience the Dragonsong War firsthand.

How long all this takes? Some players burn through the patchline in under a day, others lose hope and never finish(quitting before the end). Content wise, you are required to do 6 new trials, 3 re-fight trials, and 3 dungeons along the way(one of which is potentially a re-fight) - and as Iscah said we're hearing that the 3 alliance raids will also become required at some point(and this is the logical time to do them story-wise, though you could come back later). There are also a handful of overworld fights and some solo instances too. And of course, Iscah also mentioned that the next patch(this summer) is supposed to be trimming this section of the story a bit. Impossible to say what that means yet. My advice to new players is to focus on the MSQ for this section, and stop to do some of the optional stuff if you get bored and need a break(a bonus dungeon here and there, the alliance raids for story, the hildy quests to lighten the mood, etc). Glancing at the other thread, it sounds like you might have stopped to do a bunch of the optional stuff first. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and if you walk a little further youll get to bask in it.

As a new player myself, I just want to share some of my thoughts, which is probably different from what many people are suggesting.

When I started in January, I was planning to focus on MSQ to reach ShB in a reasonable amount of time - reading every quest text to understand the story lines without rushing through the leveling process. It was when I got into the level 50 quests in AAR, I realized that if I just do these MSQs, I would quit in a week.

So at that point, I changed my approach, and started poking around other non-MSQ things in the game, whatever raises my curiosity. MSQ became the sort of thing to do on the side, "I'll do MSQ or run that MSQ dungeon if I have time today." Granted, it took longer, in calendar days, to finish AAR, but the process was a lot less excruciating for me.

I understand what worked for me may not work for others. I was playing the game for the story (while looking pretty), not for end game, not for gear, and not for collecting things. But, this is just my 2 cents - I need that feeling of "being in control" when playing a game, not the other way around.