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

[Sylve]

I disagree with your idea.

If I'm misreading the OP, he can correct me.
But I'm fairly sure what the OP is asking for is a way to skip the 2.0 quests that are literally *Go kill 10 mobs while we discuss this, when you get back we'll have an answer".
Those sorts of quests add nothing to the story and in HW, the huge chunks of XP (2.x sidequests gave the same XP as a MSQ, in HW MSQs are double sidequest XP) and short sharp cutscenes remove the need to have those 'filler' quests 2.0 had.

Removing, or speeding up the tedium of the filler quests in the MSQ would be a good thing, leaving behind only the straight up story.

[ValkyrieL]

NO NO NO NO.....
Keep it gate it forever, I'm loving HW, not a single gold spammer.

Bots that are found farming will be delayed significantly by this.

[3Jane]

I know some in this game since launch, who although they keep up with the story often only skim or skip the text where it doesn't seem vital to the main body of the story, whereas I tend to read it all in detail . Even so they have been consistently ahead of me by a long margin since the launch of ARR. Largely because they on the whole use their time more efficiently and are generally more organised as players, so they progress more swiftly. There really isn't that much detailed second string MSQ to complete and the rest of the leveling is about as fast as you can get without being given L50 as a new player. The whole O.P complaint is stems from a vastly over exaggerated 'emperor's new game issue.'

[RichardButte]

I can't agree with this for the simple fact that playing the game as a race to the finish line is playing specifically to ignore what I think is one of the defining traits of what makes XIV a good game and a unique MMORPG.

It's not the leveling story that the biggest problem (though I've had two friends quit because it wasn't grabbing them). It's the sudden influx of story quest when you hit 50 that's the real issue.

And the issue is that there's actually not a whole hell of a lot of story there. It's a relatively small amount of story broken into tiny little pieces, separated by piles of fedex and fetch quests that add absolutely nothing to the experience.

And HW's story quest is KILLING this by comparison.

If I'm misreading the OP, he can correct me.
But I'm fairly sure what the OP is asking for is a way to skip the 2.0 quests that are literally *Go kill 10 mobs while we discuss this, when you get back we'll have an answer".

Exactly.

I see the abridged version as similar to what the Count's journal does in HW: you see a brief cutscene with some narration explaining what the warrior of light (aka you) did, what the scions did, etc. and then you'd fight whatever boss monster or run whatever dungeon was necessary because I feel that part of the story should remain since it's actually challenging and far more fun.

NO NO NO NO.....
Keep it gate it forever, I'm loving HW, not a single gold spammer.

Bots that are found farming will be delayed significantly by this.

1. Gold spammers aren't dependent upon reaching HW content to spam.

2. While this does technically slow the gathering bots, it also makes it hard for genuine players who just want to enjoy the game.

The whole O.P complaint is stems from a vastly over exaggerated 'emperor's new game issue.'

Except that two friends I've played MMOs with in the past have already quit the game because of it.

There's really no reason to have a new player slog through as much level 50 MSQ as they do now. When these quests were released, they were padded like crazy to add extra play time to the game, and most of it was pure filler content that had nothing to do with the main story (fetch this, talk to this guy, kill that, etc.).

It's not even a question of whether or not the story is good (though I think it was so so until HW). It's the fact that 2.0's MSQ is a lot like a Dragon Ball Z episode: 5 minutes of actual plot, 25 minutes of screaming. :P

[Kiara1]

This is also a reason why I cant get my friends to join.
And an FC mate whos a very busy life but resubs every 3 months or so came back for the exp and he is disappointed he had to run through all the msq.

He was at shiva though so eith the fc help we helped him through the trials, but he wanted to join us in the new zones

[Lilyanna]

I think the grind to HW wouldn't be as bad for new players if they didn't gate the new classes. If players that came into the game for those classes could level them (Even if you had to get to CCH, or make them 1 lvl for new and lvl 30 if you got into HW.) it would reduce the amount of it feeling like a complete grind, but I agree about all the filler quests ... and the LS ... You spoke to me while deep in Prea but can't talk to me across a map? ./srsly

[Snugglebutt]

It should stay as it is in basic principle, no one should get a skip ahead to HW content if was up to me. I can't help but feel most of the people complaining are thinking of it in hindsight as a player who has ran through the story already and not coming at it from a new player perspective at all. People complaining about fetch quests and kill X amount of things quests or go here speak to X NPC? It's an MMO...those are for the most part the sort of content in all MMO's like this one dating back to the days of Ultima, maybe even further back. Every new player I have met in game and talked to including my RL friends who joined like the fact this game is so story focus and story so heavily linked to progression.

What else would you be expecting? Feel free to list all the other ways that you want to level that excludes going from A to B, killing something over and over again or gather multiple of items. You whine about fetch quests and how might not find going doing the things I just mentioned fun but even if skip story quests...your still doing those same things whether grinding fates, dungeons or leves. The nature of MMO's is grind and that cannot be eradicated or removed because doing anything more than once to gain something is technically grind including everything non-story related in this game but at least with having a story focus and interjected into that grind it makes it more interesting.

A new player should expect this game to be story driven for the most part and progression linked to it because that is how it has always been so as a buyer understand product your buying before buy it. A new player who does not like story focused/progression linked MMO like this one has maybe chosen the wrong game and maybe would feel more at home playing something else, you can't please everyone but at least know what the product your buying is about instead of buying and wishing it was something else. The pre-HW story progression is interesting for the most part despite the fact many of the quests rely on MMO tropes and they are rewarding too in terms of quest rewards, gearing up and supplying you with a lot of gil by the time reach HW such as materia's and things from them to sell. I also love the fact I haven't seen a single gil farming (mining, botany or SB farming) bots in any of the HW zones thanks to the story progression requirement.

I make around 1-2 million gil per character running through ARR main story quests alone just from selling the rewards in the market board, it goes against the one character>all classes ideology but is beneficial in terms of income and the story keeps it fairly interesting in the way of breaking up what would otherwise be pure grind. You don't have to do coils or any raids to gear up VERY fast ready for HW start plus does not require much in the way of tome grinding instead if don't want to do Lab and maybe ST to be geared enough for completion of ARR story/HW start. Even if did want to go the Lab>ST route for quick gearing it doesn't take long at all these days to do so and you don't even need to do WoD etc to be geared enough.

The pacing could do with improving in between some level ranges adding few more main story quests pre-HW especially in the level 40-50 range so people have something to focus on besides grinding for example few times would come across quest chain gap of multiple levels which would be reduced to one level at most between them but other than that it is not that bad. You don't have to unlock the raids, you don't have to unlock the EX modes and the NM and HM versions of trials can be breezed through for the most part. It's not hard and it doesn't take long to clear ARR main quests up to HW even if just do them in between taking breaks from pure boring grinding if that floats your boat.

This is not the 1980's anymore with cheat codes to bypass everything you don't like in order to gain your instant gratification and neither should it be in relation to the genre that this game falls within. WoW tried their P2W instant gratification of allowing the buying a high level character and it has done nothing much to stop WoW's continued demise and decrease in subscribers while this MMO on the other hand with it's heavy story focus and trying to avoid P2W schemes like that continues to increase quite rapidly in subscribers instead of a rapid decline.

[Snugglebutt]

I think the grind to HW wouldn't be as bad for new players if they didn't gate the new classes.

Does not mean SE should let everyone bypass everything they do not like and do what they came into it to do from the offset without the effort required to reach that goal anymore so than a player coming into the game because they want to experience final coil or alexander so SE giving them a level capped character with top tier gear and a skip story progression option from the offset, this is an MMO, your expected to work towards a goal over a period of time and being an MMO that means grinds of one form or another whether that's reaching a certain level to unlock something or completing a string of quests or saving up enough gil, tomes or running instances multiple times. Carrot and stick, in this case the carrot is the new classes and HW content which is working quite well for SE plus most players are happy with it.

[Apeachs]

Agreed, way to hard for a new player to catch up. They also might become "lost" with all the sidequests and everything you need to do. The ingame help is very messy. No ingame guide ether. Almost so you must sit down with patch notes and go throught them to figure out stuff.

[Kydi]

I came back to ffxiv about 6 weeks ago for the expansion. I had previously played from about 2.2 to 2.3, had a couple of jobs at 50 and had done a bit of raid content. I didn't manage to do all the stories, so when I resubbed had to do the main quest from Mog onwards. Now, this isn't too bad, but what did strike me as surprising was the volume of FedEx quests. All too often a quest was simply talk to someone in another city to complete the quest, watch a short cut scene, then get another quest from them and talk to the original question giver. I managed it in a few days, although it was a good 15 hours content (including queues), so in glad I had a week off work.

I understand that Heavensward made some changes to the levelling and I believe streamlined it a little in terms of msq, but I'm not sure to what extent. Can you hit 50 by only doing the main quest? The other problem is the deluge of quests at level 50. I still have hundreds left around Revenant's Toll as I just didn't know what they were. I'm currently levelling DRK and will probably use this to clean up all of those quests too before embarking on the expansion quests.