MSQ 7.1 is boring

Look I\\'m not new to this game. I\\'ve been consistently subscribing over 11 years since 2.0 Phase 3 Beta. I love Final Fantasy XIV.

I LOVE the story through Endwalker, but there was always a villain.

I can\\'t be the only person who doesn\\'t think Square isn\\'t putting their all into MSQ any more. 7.0 was rough but I got through it. 7.1 seems to focus on everything that was mediocre about 7.0 and it really depresses me.

I\\'m still holding on to hope for the Exploratory Mission coming soon, but I\\'m the meantime I can\\'t help but see if there\\'s others who feel the same way about the story.

I have no idea why my phone added two slash marks before every apostrophe.

if you really a day1 player since arr launch, then you know that x.1 patches have always been uneventful, maybe it's too early to express your opinion on it? i mean you should wait for a youtube video to tell you how you should feel about it

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Originally Posted by YISUG

if you really a day1 player since arr launch, then you know that x.1 patches have always been uneventful, maybe it's too early to express your opinion on it? i mean you should wait for a youtube video to tell you how you should feel about it

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Specifically, I'm curious, so I went back to what every .1 patch in terms of the MSQ:
2.1: The Scions move to Mor Dhona, F'lahminn turns up, we fight Good King Moggle Mog. In retrospect that's actually some pretty big moments, but they hardly felt like show-stopping numbers at the time.
3.1: We first meet Krile and the Warriors of Darkness, without any indication of how important they'd go on to be. This is actually the only .1 patch with no MSQ dungeon; in fact, with the exception of a solo duty 3.1 is entirely 'talk to people'/'wait at a place' objectives, which I have been told are the worst possible things the MSQ could be.
4.1: Dungeon is the Drowned City of Skalla, but the core of the story was the Ala Mhigan summit that ended in the throne room fight with Lakshmi. This one I'll grant is a way bigger deal than I remembered, kind of a lot happened in this one.
5.1: We meet Beq Lugg in the Grand Cosmos, some balls get rolling on both curing tempering and getting the Scions back home; meanwhile, Chai-Nuzz becomes mayor. By itself, this is basically nothing, and honestly all the setup stuff it does do felt kinda inevitable even at the time.
6.1: A map party going to Alzadaal's Legacy accidentally discovers a whole new storyline, doesn't have enough runway to do anything beyond get us to the door. Endwalker was in a different position, setting up for an independent story rather than an epilogue, but even then it's basically a whole lot of laying down track for the future, without having much to do by itself.

.1 patches are almost always a bit of a downbeat; Stormblood's excepted, they're usually setting up the pieces for the patch storyline while not having much space to have a big payoff themselves. Any of them feeling big is usually a retrospective thing; Now we look back at first meeting Krile or the Warriors of Darkness as a big deal, but at the time they were just weird little toots of a fanservice horn. There was no indication they'd be around for two patches, let alone influential several expansions down the line. This is the start of a story; we don't know how big a lot of its individual pieces will become, so obviously if you just take it as what it is and refuse to take into account the future, it's gonna feel a bit unimpressive.

...except that honestly I don't even think 7.1 is boring in that context. Giving it the same treatment as I just gave the others, in spoiler tags for courtesy:

The events of and response to the Alexandrian state funeral lead to the discovery of previously unheard-of horrifying experiments, the identity and history of Gulool Ja's mother (with a conspicuous lack of an ending), and a whole-ass fake imposter Sphene starting up a horrifying suicide cult movement. Also, Koana gets his big personal character development moment. Even granted that we don't know which of these plot points will blow up big and have long-lasting consequences outside of the current storyline, I cannot honestly believe that someone would look at this patch and call it boring. This is actually much denser and more eventful than normal .1 patches, to the point where I genuinely don't think somebody could earnestly play through it and come back calling it boring. Other negative descriptors, sure, I could understand someone honestly coming to them, but not 'boring'.

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Originally Posted by YISUG

if you really a day1 player since arr launch, then you know that x.1 patches have always been uneventful, maybe it's too early to express your opinion on it? i mean you should wait for a youtube video to tell you how you should feel about it

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yeah, but let's be honest here, patch don't exist in a void. With how disappointing the story has been since 6.3 (included), it's hard to blame people finding 7.1 disappointing. I'm pretty sure if DT had not been the trainwreck it was, people would have been far less critical. people can accept a down patch after something good. Right the down period has lasted for at least 2.5 years, and people want something good. If on the paper, it's an ok x.1 patch, but being just ok is not enough anymore. FFXIV has a lot of goodwill and trust to rebuild, and it won't that doing hte bare minimum. Real question is will the SE exec realise that, or leave the game to rot.

I count myself as someone who was disappointed with Dawntrail, but I found 7.1 interesting and a bunch of the problems I had with 7.0's writing simply wasn't present. So no, it doesn't exist in a void, but someone who isn't making a firm commitment to 'Dawntrail hater' can probably find stuff in this patch's MSQ to enjoy.

Lots of people are committed to the bit, though.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

qoute'.[/HB]

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i think 7.1 was one of the more eventful X.1's, i like 4.1 more soley for fordola's cutscene, it was very impactful

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Originally Posted by YISUG

i think 7.1 was one of the more eventful X.1's, i like 4.1 more soley for fordola's cutscene, it was very impactful

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Oh yeah, I'd genuinely put forward that the 'biggest' .1 is either 4.1 or 7.1, with plenty of scope for 7.1 to pull ahead given its story threads are obviously still open. I think which one is best comes down to if you prefer one big moment versus several smaller ones; Fordola's scene and the surrounding duty is kinda the only meaningful thing that happens in 4.1, but it's a very big moment. Meanwhile 7.1 doesn't really have one 'core' thing; it's basically a bunch of different big moments that all get set into motion from the one event.

I thought it was an okay patch story, but that cliffhanger at the end was juicy!

I enjoyed it, for the most part, personally. I didn't much care about the funeral service, but the twist at the end justified it (and I understand why it was necessary anyway, regardless of my investment). The stuff with Koana was really cute, if a little After School Special-y, but that's in line with much of what we got in the first half of 7.0, so it didn't necessarily disappoint or surprise me, since his arc here was very much a direct continuation of that part of the story.

Not sure why it's an argument at all to say ".1 have always been boring" like this should be an expected standard for an ever growing MMO that is supposedly one of Square Enix's biggest income. Like, you'd think the point would be for them to not repeat these obvious negatives after so many expansions?

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Originally Posted by LastDream

Not sure why it's an argument at all to say ".1 have always been boring" like this should be an expected standard for an ever growing MMO that is supposedly one of Square Enix's biggest income. Like, you'd think the point would be for them to not repeat these obvious negatives after so many expansions?

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What I'm starting to realize is that 'boring' is a worthless word in this context.

.1 storylines aren't boring, they're downbeat. They have to be; you just beat the final boss and resolved the central conflict of the expansion, they've gotta start small and build up again. In many cases there isn't even an antagonist left on the board, of course .1 can't hit the ground running. But what it can do is lay down the track, make sure that there's a climax a couple patches down the line.

Personally I love a good .1 MSQ, a good one gives you a lot of questions to chew on in spaces that frequently were a bit too small for the expansion MSQ itself, and 7.1 did that extremely well. It's frequently .2 that's actually a bit of a whiff for me; there's often not enough setup or payoff for either to be interesting, and sometimes you get a situation where you can see exactly how this is going to end but they just haven't done it yet.