A serious discussion about abridging the story quest 1-50 (discouraging new players)

[RichardButte]

The storyline in Heavensward is amazing, thus far. I'm really, REALLY drawn into it whereas I was only mildly interested in the storyline in ARR. A tip of the hat to the devs for that.

But that brings me to the primary issue I'm seeing with the current way the storyline works in ARR content...

If you had played ARR throughout all of the content patches of the past few years, the current layout of the storyline makes sense. But for new players, especially those who just want to join their veteran friends in HW content, it's a HORRENDOUS grind, especially when you hit 50 and are trying to slog through years worth of story updates so you can try out the new classes.

I have three friends who I've tried to introduce to XIV. Out of those three, only one really remains and even he was grappling with making it through all of the 50 storyline last night (I went to bed before he finished, not sure where he left off).

I love how entering new zones in HW has the Count reading from his journal about your travels. It's a great storytelling device and it makes the whole thing more personal, and most of all, it makes it quick.

I think it would be great to have an abridged story option in ARR (at least for all of the 50 story content) that gives players a brief rundown of what's happening in a very similar fashion, then they'd still need to go do each of the dungeons/trials as they arrive, but those are the part that we can help new players with.

But most of the level 50 story quest is just running to the end of a zone just to say two words to an NPC. It could all easily be summarized in a few narrative screens and in doing so increase the likelihood that the player won't burn out in the process.

After all, this is ~2 years worth of story content that a new player is expected to hammer through in order to actually join their friends. I think it would be best if it could be sped along by offering players the option to see an abridged version of the story instead of playing through every single quest (again, most of which are just fedex quests anyway).

I say this because I've literally been unable to coax two of my friends past the amount of story quest that this game has. It's not quite as bad if the story is really grabbing you, but if you're only mildly interested in it, it's enough to make people not want to play any longer, even with the promise of fun raid encounters in the distance. :\

[Yuri_Hyuga]

Yeah, the run from A to B to A to B to A to C to D to B to D to C to A Main Scenario Questing of 2.x was mostly... painful.

Would really love if they insta-ported us in a number of instances back to the appropriate NPC.

It would be so easy to tweak to make this happen too...

The tedium turned away a lot of my friends too.

[h0tNstilettos]

I agree. FFXIV is extremely popular and the sub count continues to grow. With over 2 million active players and growing. It's the new WoW.

But the problem is as more and more content is gated behind story, it makes it more difficult for people to get involved. If they keep going like this I fear it is going to greatly damage the future of FFXIV where getting new players to join is involved. Basically I believe without a doubt that it is going to kill the game in the long run.

I agree there should be some kind of abridged version that can quickly get them up to date on the story.

[Neria]

I also have friends who've cleared the original story. Both are mildly interested in the new expansion, and despite wanting to play with them, I had to warn them about the story grind.

I would like nothing more than to play with my friends, but for now it seems they will not be joining me because to them it sounds like way too much time just to get to the new areas. When your gaming time is limited by responsibilities, grinding through old story content might sound off-putting to someone who would like to casually jump in to the new expansion.

So yes. I agree that this decision to gate the expansion behind a story that goes on and on and on even after you've already hit 50 is a little bit questionable if we think about getting new players interested. It's not a problem if you've been keeping up to date with the content, and lore-wise it does makes sense how Ishgard is gated. But it doesn't change the fact that it can be a little disheartening to new/returning players.

[RichardButte]

Wow, this is a pleasant surprise.

I expected to be hit with a wall of flame, chastising me for even suggesting that people be allowed to speed the story.

Given that I'm not alone in this experience, maybe SE will consider making the change after all...

[DubiousDisk]

Yea, the quest need to be made more...enjoyable to go through.

Because 2.0+ was literally "Go here, go there, go into this instance, time for a dungeon, cutscene time" rinse and repeat.

Heavensward feels a lot more smooth with its story as well as some of the instanced quest being incredibly fun.

[Takfloyd]

People are met with a wall of flame when they make threads demanding to be allowed into Heavensward without beating the ARR story and with no clue what's going on.

Cutting out the pointless fetch quests but keeping all the cutscenes and important quests is something almost everyone wants to see. But it would be very easy for S-E to mess up - I know I would be severely put off if I was a new player and heard that parts of the story were cut before I could start playing. They would have to be very careful. It's bound to be happen eventually though - if this game gets several more expansions it would be insane to demand a new player to play through several hundred hours of story to get current.

Warping you to each quest NPC as long as you've been at the location before would be a brilliant stopgap solution though.

[Terrini]

Or it could be like an ARR CE add-on (like fat Chocobo was) to have an item that allows you to teleport to quest Npc for 2.x content. This way, people can choose to use it or not.

[MsCroc]

It feels like 85% of the pre-50 quests were filler with not much story going on.
For example, consider what you have to do to unlock Titan.
I know leveling would be much faster if I could just breeze past the msq instead of having to do every single one.

[Blamebot]

The storyline pretty much made me bang my head on the keyboard. The actual story isn't long, but you get dozens upon dozens of nuisance quests that have you killing this, or slaying that, or delivering this to railroad you to new hubs, only to backtrack.