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

[Fatestorm]

No flame here, but I would be a voice asking S-E to NOT change the Main Story quest or abridge it in any way. It's still a RPG, and while different stages of the Main Story have different strengths, I don't think of any of it as filler. That's just my opinion, but by the way all the story is linked together, I think it should be maintained in its integrity.

[RichardButte]

No flame here, but I would be a voice asking S-E to NOT change the Main Story quest or abridge it in any way. It's still a RPG, and while different stages of the Main Story have different strengths, I don't think of any of it as filler. That's just my opinion, but by the way all the story is linked together, I think it should be maintained in its integrity.

Nothing about this would violate the integrity of the story.

The story would remain the same whether you see it through handing out every uniform yourself or through a narrative summary.

[Onikimaru]

This is an excellent idea. Signed!

[Tenku]

I agree with almost everything everyone in this thread says. To summarize:

Content gating is going to drive a lot of players away.

Stop wasting our time with fillers that requires you to run or teleport all over the place just to unlock content.

[Aeryx_Seven]

I fully support this. I have a handful of friends that stopped playing after hitting 50 in 2.0. They came back a few weeks before early access to a mountain of mind numbingly boring and tedious story quests. There are so many pointless "run here, run there, come back!" quests that could be cut out. Thankfully it seems that 3.0 going forward has a lot less errand boy quests. I'm supposed to be the Warrior of Light, not a glorified grocery getter.

In the slog to get through the 2.1 - 2.5 story, most of my friends quit before the 19th. They aren't the first, and won't be the last.

[FoxyAreku]

It's only going to get worse too...

You know what I think would be good? After one beats Praetorium, cut out the story from king moggle mog to Shiva and make all that 'optional plot', just have them go through the important bits like forming the Crystal Braves and all that.

Though, it may be hard to make work since the Scions go missing...I'm sure they could think of something.

[KaedrianLiang]

/op/

I think this can all be solved with full VA dialogue from start to finish.

Reading can be very boring, some people read to help them fall asleep!

However put a voice behind the dialogue, and the story is simply that much more engaging to a wider audience.

[Nyaria]

So, I would like to pipe in here.

As a brand-spanking new level 50, about a week before the expansion's early access launched, I had to go through all the level 50 story missions to be able to get into the heavensward early access (Loving it, 1.1m exp from 60 before the servers dropped).

I have to say, from a brand new players perspective going through the level 50 Story mission is a bit disconnected, you have months and years of patches and pauses and waits, that you just don't get (And according to my FC members, all the mentions towards revenants toll getting updated we never get to see) honestly, the level 50 story missions was literally a grind, a very long, tedious grind that I feel suffered in the end for it's story about halfway to the later half, I found myself just not CARING as much about what was going on, because all of it was all smashed together one-after another, I think about the 60-85% marks outside of the primal fights / trials I literally remember nothing of because at that point, I've been stuck on these long quest chains for quite literally 3 days, (Not counting having to literally sit and wait a few times while grinding gear to get the item levels for some of the later portions that many people had months to grind for).

It just damages the story and I love the story. Though, I have literally no idea what time has passed and when during the story due to it all chaining together, I know ARR lasted a LONG time and lots of patches seperated all the story, so the revisits felt genuine, but for someone just chaining them at 50, you lose all sense of time and direction, as the game literally tells you nothing, and just moves on, making references to changes you can't see in real time, and references to 'Time has passed" but not to how much.

I totally understand Square wanting people to see all of the story though, it's important to know how things went back there, and to jump from level 49 to ishgard is a great disservice to the story, I don't know exactly how they could abridge the content though, if they just remove requirements it feels cheapened because you didn't actually do all this, and leaving it all in makes things tedious. This is sort of a unique situation I've never seen in another MMO before, so I can't give an honest opinion on how to fix it, but simply give an example of my experience.

I hope it is somewhat helpful? :\

[shinros]

I agree they should cut down on the fetch quests. I done them before early access and the fetch quests were mind numbing I recall the quest I got from tataru to find TEA! Yes finding TEA is a main story quest. Cut that rubbish out or heck use the linkpearl when they keep asking you go back between npcs from rising stones.

[Akulious]

No flame here, but I would be a voice asking S-E to NOT change the Main Story quest or abridge it in any way. It's still a RPG, and while different stages of the Main Story have different strengths, I don't think of any of it as filler. That's just my opinion, but by the way all the story is linked together, I think it should be maintained in its integrity.

Wait so you think buying a guy lentil soup with chestnuts is vital to the storyline? Really? Like for real?

WOW. That's some integrity.