Just finished A Realm Reborn and all the patches for the first time and...

WoW.

Teledji Adeledji... and Raubahn... just WoW. Those last cut scenes prior to starting Heavensward are so good. I'm exciting to continue the story.

But my gawd, please for the love of the Flat Earth that which we live upon, please change the MSQ level requirements. It was an Absolut slog-fest getting through the final few quests of A Realm Reborn and THEN THE 100 QUESTS OF THE PATCHES!

Including ALL the Crystal Tower quests? Really? You could not have warned me? I mean, either I do this quest slog on my main role and get practically 0 xp, or I level another role to 45 through the content I just went through to play at a level where the xp reward is fair. It almost turned me away from FF14, to play with literally zero character advancement in ALL THE PREPATCH QUESTS!

Look, the story is fun, and good, and enjoyable. Just one minor tweak: once a player has a level 50 role, scale all the MSQ quests down to the current role level. It would have been soooooooooo much better to level another class during this time than to get 1/3 main role level in like 8 hours of A Realm Reborn post patch MSQ's.

That's my minor critique. Maybe more than minor, because I was not exciting to log in for a few days knowing I have like 50 quests to complete with no realistic XP gains.

Anyway, this is my first FF14 experience and I really like the community in game because it is very friendly, I'm loving the story, the complex rotations of the DPS classes, and how clear the UI makes complex parts of the game (example: gear set updates).

Cheers.

The game does warn you about crystal tower.

Post patch stuff will never give a lot of EXP. We already level way too fast and giving more exp to post patch stuff would be insane. Last time I made an alt I was nearly level 60 before even starting HW.

That said, ARR is the only one with a ton of quests post launch due to them trying to fill the game out while they worked on HW. They started getting a more concrete method down after HW and post patch content isn't nearly as fillerly. ARR is the only part of the game that's really like that.

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Originally Posted by Jury_Duty

It almost turned me away from FF14, to play with literally zero character advancement in ALL THE PREPATCH QUESTS!

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This is a common source of confusion for new players, so it helps to understand this.

• ARR (2.0) is level 1-50, so you get lots of experience.
• ARR patches (2.1-2.5) are level 50, so you don't get much experience from these quests and dungeons.
• Heavensward (3.0) is 50-60, so you get lots of experience.
• Heavensward patches (3.1-3.5) are level 60, so you don't get much experience from these quests and dungeons.

And the Heavensward example repeats for every expansion. You are not meant to get experience from what used to be max level patch quests or dungeons, but from the core expansion.

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Look, the story is fun, and good, and enjoyable. Just one minor tweak: once a player has a level 50 role, scale all the MSQ quests down to the current role level.

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That is a good idea.

Its basically another expac between ARR and HSW. Back when it was new, it was all spread out, and we didnt complain about its length because it wasnt lengthy. It was a few quests every once in a while. It is a MASSIVE impediment now to getting into Heavensward.

I literally just did it, and it took longer to do than all of ARR before it. (and this is AFTER they pruned some of the more "EWW, go here, do this, go back, go here, do this, go back" quests.)

Edit: I was lvl 60 before i even got into HSW.

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Originally Posted by Jury_Duty

I mean, either I do this quest slog on my main role and get practically 0 xp, or I level another role to 45 through the content I just went through to play at a level where the xp reward is fair.

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50. You wouldn't be able to do any of those quests unless you level yet another job to 50, and they'd still be getting the same experience.

Your level has very little impact on anything besides what you can access or wear, anyway. All instanced content syncs you down to some relatively reasonable power level, so you don't really gain anything by getting more xp. Especially in all the patch quests, when there is literally no benefit to being higher level, unless maybe you're desperate to buy new gear off the MB. But, again, there's no need to be in gear higher level than what quests sync to, so... just enjoy the ride. You'll hit level cap long before you run out of quests.

Honestly, the entirety of ARR / Post-ARR could use an "expansion" all to itself that focuses on axing the entire thing and redoing / rewriting it. It's so absurdly boring and bloated even after the negligible amount of content they already trimmed from it. The whole thing is a product of early 2000s MMO design.

can confirm I was missing a few levels for MSQ as well. so had to grind a lil bit out

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Originally Posted by Jagick

Honestly, the entirety of ARR / Post-ARR could use an "expansion" all to itself that focuses on axing the entire thing and redoing / rewriting it. It's so absurdly boring and bloated even after the negligible amount of content they already trimmed from it. The whole thing is a product of early 2000s MMO design.

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ARR is, but the story is good as well. They trimmed a lot of it, but some bits remain like handing out food at the very beginning. What makes ARR difficult to get through is that you have no mounts for 20 levels, you don't have the aetherytes yet so you have to run everywhere, you have the design of returning to the waking sands instead of them coming to you or using a linkshell (but we get Vesper Bay Aetheryte Tickets now) and you have to unlock everything and do blue sidequests all the time. ARR isn't actually so bad to get through and what takes the most time is the pacing of the dungeons and the titan detour. The titan detour seems to be part of the story they want to tell though.

I wouldn't describe post-ARR as boring because it is a story about the crystal braves. It's actually a lot better now that we can fly. What was annoying about post-ARR was navigating the terrain to get everywhere and running up spiral towers. Now you can fly.

The bigger problem is the amount of side content that you are likely to get distracted with. If you return to Mor Dhona after beating ARR, you will see 100 blue sidequests and might end up doing lots of unnecessary dungeons and trials that bloat your experience of ARR.

That's kind of surprising. Last time I ran an alt through ARR into HW, I was at least 54 or 55 when starting HW. Did they really reduce XP that much? I guess I'll have to run another alt through.

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Originally Posted by Jagick

Honestly, the entirety of ARR / Post-ARR could use an "expansion" all to itself that focuses on axing the entire thing and redoing / rewriting it. It's so absurdly boring and bloated even after the negligible amount of content they already trimmed from it. The whole thing is a product of early 2000s MMO design.

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They actually trimmed a big amount from 2.0-2.2. It was 2.3 to 2.56 that didn't get much trimming, which is just as well considering it was setting up not just HW but also the start of SB.

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Originally Posted by Bukachu

can confirm I was missing a few levels for MSQ as well. so had to grind a lil bit out

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Did that happen when you finished the level 46 MSQ and suddenly the level jumped to 49?

I had that problem when I was leveling an alt last year. I was deliberately avoiding all sources of bonus XP other than rested (so no FC buff, no earrings, no road to 70, etc.) and only doing MSQ plus class/job quests. I had to grind my way from 46 to 49 to continue the MSQ.

Someone getting bonus XP or doing a bit of side content (especially roulettes) shouldn't run into any problems unless they're leveling multiple jobs at the same time.

Contrast that to the current alt I'm leveling that has the advantage of Menphina earring plus Road to 80. She was level 61 by the time she reached Praetorium. Normally I would have unlocked a second job to split the XP but I'm trying to get this character caught up to friends.

Thanks for the all the feedback! I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels like it's a bit too much.

And now I'm leveling up the gun class doing twirly-twirl shots every 3 button pushes : ))

Just wait until higher levels where you're doing jumps and spins with EVERY shot.

It used to be 100 quests. They cut them down. Still not great, but yeah.

Also, CT used to require doing two FATEs and you had to wait for them to decide to spawn :D

But yeah 2.X has always been a bit of a slog.

Just finished HSW. Took me less time to finish all of it than to do the post ARR pre HSW questline.