So... I took a fresh alt character to EW in under 4 days worth of time

Someone else mentioned rushing a character through the game, so thought I'd put this out there.

In-game time totaled to 3 days, 10 hours, but maybe 6-8 of that was time spent afk. I spent about a month playing on the character though, but I would hope you wouldn't assume that I just casually ran through the MSQ like that in 3 and a half days straight. The hours are a bit uneven over the month since there'd be times like today where I spent 8 hours on the character(unhealthy I know, but I just finished my last final for this semester this morning and I was in a really good mood).

The character was made on Dynamis for the road to 80 buff. I started CNJ, grabbed SAM at 50, DNC at 60, RPR/SGE at 70. Played as WHM through HW(did all job quests up until that point), and around that point I hit level 70 so I grabbed SGE. Did all the SGE job quests for Panhaima which took about an hour too. I probably didn't need it, but I didn't want to be that person(that's a lie, I needed it for SoS and literally every level 80 dungeon because my teams kept running through every resource I had). You can create keybinds for each class, and I'd usually have one for my healing class and one for my DPS class or one Healer along with one for RPR + one for DNC(for Pelo).

I only did 4-5 levelling roulettes and around the same for MSQ. The gear from SGE/RPR overgears your left side for SB and below. I probably should have checked the MB for cheap upgrades but I didn't bother until level 80.

Generally I tried to use trials from HW on and as check points. I queued for everything as a healer, and I never had a dungeon queue over minutes. I never had a trial queue over 10 minutes, but I believe that's because I did my best to do my msq trials either around reset time or in the evening.

Oh and for solo instances, if you can die at the beginning really quickly you can use that to get access to "very easy" mode to maybe speed up the quest. If you can't or if you know the instance is tied to a story line then it's not worth it.

The character ended with around 1,500,000 raw gil from progressing through the story line. 100,000 of it was spent on cheap level 80 upgrades.

You could probably do this way better than what I did.

I actually had a plan with this in mind but it's just way too tedious. The only reason I really finished this character(or at least finished getting it to the goal) was mostly because I started it. Obviously don't do this as a regular player, and probably don't do this on an alt either unless you're really curious.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

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I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

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Doubleagent is still going. Man's still in the panda starting zone, and he still picks flowers.

I've done this multiple times. It's not long if you just burn through it and skip cutscenes as a veteran player that knows what to do. But new players don't know what to do so they are likely to do it slower and a lot of them don't have that sort of time if they have life commitments and play casually, so every time they spend longer on something than a veteran player would it takes up their 4 hours a week.

And a lot of players are completionists so they actually do sidequests or at least blue quests and get stuck in a queue for ARR extreme trials for hours and other side content, or get lost in the gold saucer content or social environment of the game such as an FC. They also just want to explore this brand new world and take it in slowly rather than being efficient.

When you account for all of this, queue times and cutscene watching it builds up to be a lot for some players.

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was around 2 days and 19 hours to complete the story start to finish skipping cutscenes and just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

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Are you sure you're impressed? I'm not saying sitting thru all the cutscenes is high art, but omg no one should care at all about this. Like, seriouslyl

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Doubleagent is still going. Man's still in the panda starting zone, and he still picks flowers.

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That's cool they made him into a card in that Hearthstone game.

Hmm I guess it is possible, but during my levelling with alts I also try to get the Aether Currents - it will make the post patch travelling easier - and I guess if you don't use a class like tank or healer, this takes a lot longer.

I guess it is possible to do in less than a week...but then you need to have a lot of patience because it's still over 700 quests (over 800 if you count EW and its current post patch content) and I don't know if a new player can do that many quests in a single sitting. I certainly can't: not even in WoW or SWTOR I did this many quests.

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Originally Posted by Ishe-P

Are you sure you're impressed? I'm not saying sitting thru all the cutscenes is high art, but omg no one should care at all about this. Like, seriouslyl

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If you don't care then why did you post? Like seriouslyl

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Originally Posted by Voltyblast

Hmm I guess it is possible, but during my levelling with alts I also try to get the Aether Currents - it will make the post patch travelling easier - and I guess if you don't use a class like tank or healer, this takes a lot longer.

I guess it is possible to do in less than a week...but then you need to have a lot of patience because it's still over 700 quests (over 800 if you count EW and its current post patch content) and I don't know if a new player can do that many quests in a single sitting. I certainly can't: not even in WoW or SWTOR I did this many quests.

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Aether currents are a waste of time if you're speed running it. There's only one location you return to enough times for it to be worth it, and I'm sure you could route the side quests in for it, but I didn't bother to consider it.

This is interesting thank you ^_^ thought about levelling an alt but every time I think of how long Stormblood is I nope out

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was [...] just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

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I like how your argument for why the MSQ's length is exaggerated, is that a seasoned speedrunner who knew exactly what he was doing and was going as quickly as possible on purpose was able to do it in "only" 144 hours. I'm taking the unskipped CS metric because my main issue with the MSQ is that first timers, who are obviously not skipping the cutscenes, tend to quit the game before they finish the msq, in large part because they get burned out on the msq. Saying this as someone who used to run a CWLS for helping new players and watched like 85% of them just give up and quit around post-ARR or HW.

Even without talking about the length though, the actual nature of the gameplay is just unventful. It's a walking simulator. Me personally, I'd rather pay 20 dollars and just skip than deal with that again. Others can do what they like, of course. Nothing against the people who love the MSQ. But holy god damn, 144 hours is a pretty hefty time investment for most people, and that's like the optimal best case scenario. A first timer trying to just get to the part of the game where he can do fun content with his friends is looking at a much longer time, and we lose a lot of people on the way there. I don't see the point in discounting that just because some cracked out speedrunner did it in a timeframe that's still pretty damn long.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was around 2 days and 19 hours to complete the story start to finish skipping cutscenes and just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

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It's just the cutscenes that make the game long. Skip all the talking and sidequests in any RPG and you can likely beat it pretty fast. Hell, there's a reason why there's a trophy for clearing FF9 in under 12 hours. There's even a guide to GET every missable item and still reach the end of the game in under 12 hours.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It's just the cutscenes that make the game long. Skip all the talking and sidequests in any RPG and you can likely beat it pretty fast. Hell, there's a reason why there's a trophy for clearing FF9 in under 12 hours. There's even a guide to GET every missable item and still reach the end of the game in under 12 hours.

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Probably why many of them have mostly unskippable conversations instead of cutscenes (that also might be unskippable) in such games. Replay value takes a crippling hit, though.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

Someone else mentioned rushing a character through the game, so thought I'd put this out there.

In-game time totaled to 3 days, 10 hours, but maybe 6-8 of that was time spent afk. I spent about a month playing on the character though, but I would hope you wouldn't assume that I just casually ran through the MSQ like that in 3 and a half days straight. The hours are a bit uneven over the month since there'd be times like today where I spent 8 hours on the character(unhealthy I know, but I just finished my last final for this semester this morning and I was in a really good mood).

The character was made on Dynamis for the road to 80 buff. I started CNJ, grabbed SAM at 50, DNC at 60, RPR/SGE at 70. Played as WHM through HW(did all job quests up until that point), and around that point I hit level 70 so I grabbed SGE. Did all the SGE job quests for Panhaima which took about an hour too. I probably didn't need it, but I didn't want to be that person(that's a lie, I needed it for SoS and literally every level 80 dungeon because my teams kept running through every resource I had). You can create keybinds for each class, and I'd usually have one for my healing class and one for my DPS class or one Healer along with one for RPR + one for DNC(for Pelo).

I only did 4-5 levelling roulettes and around the same for MSQ. The gear from SGE/RPR overgears your left side for SB and below. I probably should have checked the MB for cheap upgrades but I didn't bother until level 80.

Generally I tried to use trials from HW on and as check points. I queued for everything as a healer, and I never had a dungeon queue over minutes. I never had a trial queue over 10 minutes, but I believe that's because I did my best to do my msq trials either around reset time or in the evening.

Oh and for solo instances, if you can die at the beginning really quickly you can use that to get access to "very easy" mode to maybe speed up the quest. If you can't or if you know the instance is tied to a story line then it's not worth it.

The character ended with around 1,500,000 raw gil from progressing through the story line. 100,000 of it was spent on cheap level 80 upgrades.

You could probably do this way better than what I did.

I actually had a plan with this in mind but it's just way too tedious. The only reason I really finished this character(or at least finished getting it to the goal) was mostly because I started it. Obviously don't do this as a regular player, and probably don't do this on an alt either unless you're really curious.

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Interesting info, thanks for sharing your experience! This could be useful for anyone contemplating buying a level skip and didn't care about the story.

And of course those who speedrun as a hobby as a personal challenge (like in Resident Evil).

Honestly, the problem I find, at least with a few friends that have tried and played is not necessarily that the story is too long, or takes too long to do, but simply that largely there is not much to do (MMO-wise) on the journey to max outside of that e.g., raids and trials at Ex and above players just blitz through on unsync, so it's overall not the greatest experience.

There are deep dungeons, but for the most part, this is about it.