The main quest feel like a burden now with the EXP increase

Hi' I've finally managed to get my brother to try FF online but now he is getting discouraged.

Playing a white mage (or any FF healer) solo is not really the funniest experience you can have in an MMO. Using 1 DoT and spamming 1 single DD to kill mobs slowly is a bit of a chore.

Back in the days the pace of the main quest was healthy. You would do a few quest then you could run some dungeons in groups and got back to soloing the main quest.

But now, simply doing the main quest you just out level it so fast that it get trivia and meaning less. He is now lvl 30 but only up to the lvl 20 main quest.

In this game you need to do the main quest in order unlock stuff so taking a break from it when your already 10 level ahead feel like your punishing yourself.

Also you can't mentor down while in the open world so basically we can only play together when his quest tell me to do group content.

The main quest can be fun if you don't have to grind trough it I'd say. especially if you play a healer.

I find this to also be the case at higher levels and in the latest expansion, I find that you level way too fast in your first playtrough or first job. Personally I prefer having to grind a little before reaching the level for MSQ.

Best way to progress right now imo is with multiple jobs (especially if you main healer), have a second or perhaps third job with you and try having them all even leveled. You can switch jobs before you turn in a quest or finish a fate so it's pretty easy to manage. It does suck if you want to roleplay into being and playing only 1 job but seems like this game tries to discourage that (with the easy XP and with how some jobs are only available at certain level/progression).

They literally just announced that they were revamping the system last week. Fewer quests, modified xp. The quests they kept are less fetchy, etc.. Should hit with the next patch.

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Originally Posted by Venur

Hi' I've finally managed to get my brother to try FF online but now he is getting discouraged.

Playing a white mage (or any FF healer) solo is not really the funniest experience you can have in an MMO. Using 1 DoT and spamming 1 single DD to kill mobs slowly is a bit of a chore.

Back in the days the pace of the main quest was healthy. You would do a few quest then you could run some dungeons in groups and got back to soloing the main quest.

But now, simply doing the main quest you just out level it so fast that it get trivia and meaning less. He is now lvl 30 but only up to the lvl 20 main quest.

In this game you need to do the main quest in order unlock stuff so taking a break from it when your already 10 level ahead feel like your punishing yourself.

Also you can't mentor down while in the open world so basically we can only play together when his quest tell me to do group content.

The main quest can be fun if you don't have to grind trough it I'd say. especially if you play a healer.

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I mean you can always play another job or maybe roll another character in the meantime. Your brother could also play arcanist>scholar to bring up the healing class or another job as well. Its what I did with my friends it simply makes the game more enjoyable to play something at their level or quest with them. That's me though.

5.3 will bring a slew of changes to the MSQ for ARR but that's been pushed back so I imagine your friend will be done by then with the MSQ.

Worst case, your brother could shell out money for the MSQ boost.

Picking up a second class is the easiest solution. Healers and tanks (if you're confident) are better levelled through dungeons since they're in demand; DPS are the better classes to be receiving quest EXP since dungeon queues are slower for them.

I rather XP from the MSQ be too much than too little since, as said, you can use the surplus to try other jobs, which should be encouraged.

As someone who reached current content doing every single side quest there is out in the open world, I must say: they are not worth it. It feels like, in ARR especially (but HW as well), the side quests in the open world are quantity over quality. The writing is good in terms of prose, but the actual content and what it says about the world, its characters, etc., is severely lacking. There's some really amazing quests with fun and interesting characters or plots, but they are swept away in a deluge of utter trash. It's not until Shadowbringers that I feel they actually took time to attempt to make side quests feel meaningful. Not wholly successful, but I can at least feel they tried here.

So what then, have people run more dungeons and stuff when they hit a level gate? Eh. If the game had better side quests, if the FATE system pre-Shadowbringers was better, if we weren't ushering everyone towards Deep Dungeon to level, if the embarrassment that is the MSQ roulette didn't exist, I might be inclined to say the game would be better if people had to engage with more of the old content to catch up. As it is now, too much of it is not exactly the most flattering part of the game, and I rather people be able to focus on digesting the main scenario. Props to them for finally going back to improve ARR; I look forward to seeing the pacing improvements they said they are going to make to Heavensward next.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

They literally just announced that they were revamping the system last week. Fewer quests, modified xp. The quests they kept are less fetchy, etc.. Should hit with the next patch.

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Oh good, I've missed that. Its a good idea since an MMO beeing solo focused that heavely upon starting the game was a bad idea.

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

I mean you can always play another job or maybe roll another character in the meantime. Your brother could also play arcanist>scholar to bring up the healing class or another job as well. Its what I did with my friends it simply makes the game more enjoyable to play something at their level or quest with them. That's me though.

5.3 will bring a slew of changes to the MSQ for ARR but that's been pushed back so I imagine your friend will be done by then with the MSQ.

Worst case, your brother could shell out money for the MSQ boost.

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But that wouldn't solve the problem of soloing 90% of his playtime, in fact it would even make it worst.

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Originally Posted by Venur

But that wouldn't solve the problem of soloing 90% of his playtime, in fact it would even make it worst.

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The MSQ is almost entirely solo content. I view this game as a single player game that happens to be an mmo. All the group content is typically in instances.

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Originally Posted by Venur

Oh good, I've missed that. Its a good idea since an MMO beeing solo focused that heavely upon starting the game was a bad idea.

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Pretty much 80% of this game is solo content when you leveling and it's not gonna change much.

Massive Multiplayer Online Single Player Role Playing Game.

While that wasn't meant to be funny, I gotta admit, I got a good laugh out of that when I repeated it out loud.

Hopefully they don't do the giant single player quest series with their next MMO. It would be better if mandatory quests were only every 5 levels or even 10 levels, with everything else being optional sidequests.

The small number of mandatory story quests could be given more dev time for things like motion capture and every line voiced. Quality over quantity and fewer prereqs to reach the group content.

Also I feel like the era of flooding maps with filler sidequests for exp is over. Most of the na/eu players I know seem to hate questing, even the class/job quests required to unlock abilities and traits. I've got far too many friends who reluctantly go back and unlock their buttons years after they leveled past the point they should have them.

I'd like the next generation of mmos to rethink the way story is delivered and how group battle content is unlocked and accessed.

It's not the MSQ that's the problem when it comes to outpacing MSQ level. It's doing a lot of side content, along with the Road to 70 bonus if you're on a preferred world. If you stick solely to the MSQ, you'll end up falling behind in level and will need to do the additional content to get caught up in a few places (notably Coerthas and Northern Thanalan).

If your brother wants to be doing the side content with you, like roulettes, I'd suggest he pick up a second job now while he's still fairly low level and in the early part of the MSQ. It's fairly easy to level 2 jobs at the same, using one for MSQ and then switching between the two for roulettes and side content depending on which needs more XP. I do that on an alt I level with a friend's alt.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Hopefully they don't do the giant single player quest series with their next MMO. It would be better if mandatory quests were only every 5 levels or even 10 levels, with everything else being optional sidequests.

The small number of mandatory story quests could be given more dev time for things like motion capture and every line voiced. Quality over quantity and fewer prereqs to reach the group content.

Also I feel like the era of flooding maps with filler sidequests for exp is over. Most of the na/eu players I know seem to hate questing, even the class/job quests required to unlock abilities and traits. I've got far too many friends who reluctantly go back and unlock their buttons years after they leveled past the point they should have them.

I'd like the next generation of mmos to rethink the way story is delivered and how group battle content is unlocked and accessed.

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It's a franchise known for its story. Players will be unhappy if the story becomes scarce and most of their time is spent with random grinding. I don't seem them changing a formula that has worked for them.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

It's a franchise known for its story. Players will be unhappy if the story becomes scarce and most of their time is spent with random grinding. I don't seem them changing a formula that has worked for them.

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I mean still have the story (only the high quality quests, no filler) but make most of them separate sidequest lines with different characters in each that can be done in any order, not one giant MSQ with the same characters stretching through every expansion with all of the multiplayer content locked behind it.

They said themselves a lot of players quit the game entirely at a certain point in 2.X MSQ. I think they can do a better job to appeal to different types of players than they did with FF XIV. I'm a lore guy too but I see the complaints of people wanting to jump into an mmo with their friends as very valid.

They are getting locked behind weeks of single player quests and quitting before they experience some of the game's best pve content. I think there's a better middle ground between mmo and single player story adventure. It's too late for xiv but the next time they make an mmo from the ground up I'd like them to rethink the structure and new player experience.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

It's a franchise known for its story. Players will be unhappy if the story becomes scarce and most of their time is spent with random grinding. I don't seem them changing a formula that has worked for them.

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If SE ever makes another MMO I'd rather they absolutely forego the story for drastically higher quality playable content that, you know, lasts longer than a week. And it's an MMO not a singleplayer game. The MSQ drains a huge amount of the game's budget and voice acting alone is a large portion of that.

Less mandatory story quests = higher quality story quests and higher quality playable content (and higher quality cutscenes, less standing still and using emotes and more actual action). Quality>Quantity, if the quality of your content is great people won't complain it's boring. If there's an abundance of something, and it's terrible (most of the MSQs in FF14 are ye olde fetch quests with no action), people will complain.

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

If SE ever makes another MMO I'd rather they absolutely forego the story for drastically higher quality playable content that, you know, lasts longer than a week. And it's an MMO not a singleplayer game. The MSQ drains a huge amount of the game's budget and voice acting alone is a large portion of that.

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Would have to drop the numbering if not the entire brand, as the comment you reply to mentioned, it is a story-driven franchise, and I thinkthat emphasis helps to seperate it from WoW a little.

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Less mandatory story quests = higher quality story quests and higher quality playable content (and higher quality cutscenes, less standing still and using emotes and more actual action). Quality>Quantity, if the quality of your content is great people won't complain it's boring. If there's an abundance of something, and it's terrible (most of the MSQs in FF14 are ye olde fetch quests with no action), people will complain.

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I agree,but I want to see if the XIV devs can consistnly apply the "quality over quantity" principle to their current game going forwardsince we are getting less content compared to 2.X (3 Dungeons per patch compared to the single one we get now, among other things).

Progressing the MSQ as a healer is a snorefest, and I'm surprised I did it for as long as I did. It doesn't get much better either. Many healers feel less engaged in a lot of content because encounters don't require full use of their healing kits, and they have very few DPS skills to compensate for that downtime. For MSQ instances, quite often there will be NPC who heals, which basically takes that responsibility away from them as well.

In short, it would be a good idea that your buddy has a really good idea what he's getting into with the healer role. Not that I discourage playing it. There is a reason why I main this role, but it gets very little love from the devs. Clutch saves though, are always appreciated from the players you're with and nearly makes up for the devs neglect towards healers.

288 MSQs from 2.0 to the end of 2.5 is waaaay too many. They need to cut it drastically back and I don't think the 13% they cited (which will cut it back to 250) will be enough, but we'll see if they cut enough steps for it to be fine.

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If SE ever makes another MMO I'd rather they absolutely forego the story for drastically higher quality playable content that, you know, lasts longer than a week. And it's an MMO not a singleplayer game. The MSQ drains a huge amount of the game's budget and voice acting alone is a large portion of that.

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The msq will be somewhere between 1 and 2% of the total time spent playing ff14.

It probably has more design time spent on it than the rest of that 98% combined, and it shows more and more each expansion.

I think it is okay (just). I just finished ARR and did most of the side stories and managed to finish the game at level 50. Well, the final quest made me level 51 but whatever. Having said that though, I cheesed it by using quests to feed exp to my fisher class.

I understand what the OP means about overleveling too much. Content starts to feel irrelevant, and you don't get to use your full kit when a quest sends you out into the open world, especially if it gets so bad that you can one or two shot mobs. I just wrapped up the 2.1 story quests as a Samurai and I'm now level 53 going on 54 thanks to ARR 'end game' content. I haven't touched the level roulette, that's ARR-2.1 end took me from 51 to 53 and I haven't even started Hildibrand intro quests yet. Again, I don't strictly mind it at this stage since trying to stem the tide is a losing battle. However, by the time I get to Heavensward, I'm going to faceroll content that I'm not synced down to aren't I? I'm already facerolling content like the Beast Tribes or whatever.

Yes, okay you can 'get around it' by picking up another class, but some people don't want to be switching classes. Some people like to stay on one class, it's a matter of playstyles IMO.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

288 MSQs from 2.0 to the end of 2.5 is waaaay too many. They need to cut it drastically back and I don't think the 13% they cited (which will cut it back to 250) will be enough, but we'll see if they cut enough steps for it to be fine.

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Mr. Happy is posting a set of videos where he is playing the 2.0-2.55 series of quests now, and will do so again after it gets trimmed. He's using a set of arbitrary rules in order to pace himself at what he feels like is a normal rate of progression. He understands that new players don't have access to the same things he does, so he takes certain advantages away. Not a bad a choice for content. I have to admit that I don't care for his content all that much, but I do have to commend the guy for essentially putting himself through ARR trice over, which when you add his initial trip, second trip, and the third trimmed trip together, it is an insane amount of quests.

I definitely recommend it for players such as myself who are curious about the changes, and just don't really have the time to play, or are just too committed to their character to go through the MSQ again. If I were to actually play through it again after the updates, I wouldn't even notice the difference with the exception to being able to fly.

It starts here for anyone who is interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKAlZssfjr8

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Originally Posted by Floortank

288 MSQs from 2.0 to the end of 2.5 is waaaay too many. They need to cut it drastically back and I don't think the 13% they cited (which will cut it back to 250) will be enough, but we'll see if they cut enough steps for it to be fine.

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I have to imagine the bulk of the quests cut will be from 2.1-2.55, as that's where the bulk of the filler happens to be aside from condensing the Titan quest which is also the other most egregious time waster up until that point. 38 quests out of the 100+ slog that is 2.1-2.55 isn't too bad in all truth. Though I would prefer it'd be more than that since, again, Titan exists and that was hell and legitimately only created to make our characters have a reason to visit certain areas like Southern Thanalan.

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Originally Posted by Venur

Hi' I've finally managed to get my brother to try FF online but now he is getting discouraged.

Playing a white mage (or any FF healer) solo is not really the funniest experience you can have in an MMO. Using 1 DoT and spamming 1 single DD to kill mobs slowly is a bit of a chore.

Back in the days the pace of the main quest was healthy. You would do a few quest then you could run some dungeons in groups and got back to soloing the main quest.

But now, simply doing the main quest you just out level it so fast that it get trivia and meaning less. He is now lvl 30 but only up to the lvl 20 main quest.

In this game you need to do the main quest in order unlock stuff so taking a break from it when your already 10 level ahead feel like your punishing yourself.

Also you can't mentor down while in the open world so basically we can only play together when his quest tell me to do group content.

The main quest can be fun if you don't have to grind trough it I'd say. especially if you play a healer.

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I honestly wish I was 10 levels ahead when I did ARR MSQ (I started FFXIV around the time Shadowbringers came out). I just wanted to progress through it smoothly but I was usually barred from doing the next quest when all I wanted was to get to Heavensward as soon as I can since I heard great things about it. All of my friends at the time were enjoying Shadowbringers while I was stuck doing the painful ARR grind. Being ahead in levels and tunneling through MSQ in ARR is honestly a lot better than progress being constantly halted and being forced to do a bunch of tedious things on the side before picking up where I last left off.

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It's a franchise known for its story. Players will be unhappy if the story becomes scarce and most of their time is spent with random grinding. I don't seem them changing a formula that has worked for them.

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You can have a great story but dont lock everything behind 300 hours of it.
Hope someday YoshiP fulfill his dream and create MMO without borders of creativity that FF franchise gives us. Something more like ARR, with deeper thoughts about RPG mechanics, nice difficulty curve, raids that looks like actual raids and living world, not deadless zones that we have now.

It's hard to imagine anyone saying too much experience is a bad thing, isn't just being contrary. There are 6 preferred worlds on the NA data center right now and 22 hrs of the day you can't make new characters on any of them. Leveling was never the issue and preferred worlds just exposes that more. You can be level 60 on 3 classes with Preferred boost and still be MSQ locked out of any of the expansions. I'm guessing that is what they want to solve.

I typically level 2 jobs at the same time when running MSQ. Just back and forth keeping them about the same level as I go. I usually wrap up an expansion with 1 job at cap and 1 about a level or two under. The XP I get is just doing MSQ and daily roulettes. I've found this pace to be pretty relaxing and better equips me for doing other things with my FC when I reach cap (as in I have 2 different jobs I can run; DPS and Tank)

There really should be an option to lock your level like a 'don't give me experience' mode or something.

Have him pick up a second or third class.

Everytime a new expansion comes out I run with 2 jobs simply because the xp gains are so great.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

However, by the time I get to Heavensward, I'm going to faceroll content that I'm not synced down to aren't I? I'm already facerolling content like the Beast Tribes or whatever.

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The further you get in the story, the less battle content happens outside of instances. Im trying to think of the last important thing i did in the open world, and im drawing a blank. So since youre almost always synced(and rarely more then 1 level above the quest), this doesnt matter as much as you might think.

It shouldn't really be a big deal. Use gear that matches your MSQ level and you'll hardly notice a difference. I like being able to outlevel the MSQ myself. Gear,especially at low levels needs to be replaced too frequently, and classes below 60 are a bit sparse with respect to skills.