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

[Valoiz]

HW story is a "second season" from ARR story, u have to do it and deal with it. If u dont like CS just skip it. Main story help u to lv up a bit faster, even in ARR. And lv 50 story quest only take u about 4-6 hours.

HW Main Story not even make sense if u dunno anything bout ARR.

Looks like some ppl wants to be the "Hero of ligth" who:

Know no shit about Eorzean nations
Never interact with Eorzean ppl or beast tribes till HW
Never killed Levi/ King Mog / Shiva / Ramuh (cuz thats all lv 50 stuff)
Never beat the empire or destroy Ultima...

so... some ppl wants to be a really shity Hero compare to us, who did all ARR MS
FFXIV will never be a generic MMO withou story or an Insta 50 like WoW is doing.

[Felis]

Except that 90% of the "story" in the MSQ L50 is actually pointless filler that was added to pad the time played and has nothing to do with the story itself. guide the player through the world and make him to speak with many NPCs (because modern players don't speak with NPCs without a quest) to learn who they are and what they do.

I fixed it a bit
For time sinks there is already relic quest and Coil gear droprate.

The same in HW MSQ. First part is "Sightseeing through Ishgard", followed by "Sightseeing through Western Coerthas" and "Sightseeing through Sea of Clouds".
Would you also call them fillers?

[Voltyblast]

Looks like some ppl wants to be the "Hero of ligth" who:

Know no shit about Eorzean nations
Never interact with Eorzean ppl or beast tribes till HW
Never killed Levi/ King Mog / Shiva / Ramuh (cuz thats all lv 50 stuff)
Never beat the empire or destroy Ultima...

so... some ppl wants to be a really shity Hero compare to us, who did all ARR MS
FFXIV will never be a generic MMO withou story or an Insta 50 like WoW is doing.

What if I don't wanna be the hero of light? I actually don't like being a hero of goodness but rather someone who do things for their own benefits.

So yeah you're correct: I wouldn't want to know anything about the nations, nor interract with people, nor kill any of the primals or destroy Ultima. Heck, if I could I would even defect to the Garleans: I would love to have been given the choice and to see how the story would unfold from the other side of the game....HECK it's why in SWTOR I play a Sith, because I don't like the "goodie goodie" of the jedi code.

This is just me however but if the choice was there, I'm sure people would've done it too.

[Mintyfresh]

@RichardButte:
Bite the bullet man.

It's painful, but bite it. I returned to the game after a long time . I had to pick up from "Pass a Small Hest" which was right around the beginning of the 7th Astral era. I did about 104 quests in 3 days. Sh18 almost turned me into a lunatic.

I think I'll tell you what I learned from it.
It's a very very horrific, painful and a very boring experience. People who are saying it's amazing part of the story and somehow they did amazing things by accomplishing the "hero of light"..by running from point A->B->C->A->C->B->B->C->A->C->B->A->C->B->B-> are delusional and you should let them feel that they accomplished a lot by reading quests that meant nothing 90% of the time.

However, In their defense(and I've played a lot of MMORPG's), this game, by the looks of it IS a story driven game. That's just the nature of it. Locking classes behind the MSQ is stupid, I agree. Infact, as soon as you hit lvl 30 on MSQ, you should have access to new classes so you can just continue playing on new classes instead of literally doing the whole MSQ on a class you don't give a Sh18 about, but I suppose that's the design of the game, however shallow it may be.
And don't get frustrated when people take your words and twist and mold it into stupid sh1* like somehow you don't want to help friends, that sort of idiocy has it's own special place in all forums and you'll find enough people subscribing to that mindset here.

SO really, in closing, instead of getting frustrated, just go through the whole damn story, the game is a good game overall but you have to endure the painful parts.

[Luvbunny]

@RichardButte:
Newsflash: everything about HW is all point to this simple sentence "gating content, areas, and side quests under main mission story". If you skip the HW MSQ and just go explore, you will see NOTHING MUCH when it comes to quests. You can't even zone to the next zone. You can't even fly. You can't find aether to attune ASAP after you arrive there. You can't can't can't do much of anything.

Here is the irony of these threads, which is pretty stupid if you ask me. Asking to completely make MSQ optional in 2.0. will render the entire content worthless. A lot of players will reach level 50 by doing the same boring grind over and over and somewhat clueless on how things come so far. Then they suddenly come to 3.0, and realize every single thing are "gated" behind main story quests.

FF14 is very newbie casual player friendly, Yoshi has stated many times that level 1-50 is your training wheel to introduce many aspects of the game mechanic and play style. To some veteran WoW raider or FFXI players, these "training" will come as "OMG so goddamn slow" but it is there for all the other new players to this genre who only know FF offline. The focus on MSQ and how it is tied directly in opening the game world is coming from how FF games are structured. This is again, Final Fantasy game first and foremost, with multiplayer aspect. I cannot stress this many times over to those people who just want to skip EVERYTHING and go straight to have ALL dungeons list unlocked from the beginning....

And if you are here asking to be able to SKIP all MSQ in 2.0-2.55, you might as well ask the same thing to be done to 3.0 because as I have stated numerous times. 3.0 IS THE SAME THING, longer, bigger, further, and LOCKING everything behind MSQ.... So to all of your friend who hates going through MSQ, they will arrive to 3.0, expecting exciting content, kill everything all access, to find out: EVERYTHING is gated behind MSQ... They will tell you all these hubris are pointless since 3.0 is one boring expansion with zero content, because everything is LOCKED behind MSQ.

That's the point of this whole discussion. Make ALL MSQ optional so player can just go straight to dungeons and trials and access all areas without having to go through to entire MSQ fetch quest, hide and seek, lore exploration, learning backstory for those various NPCs in the game. I got news for you: THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF GAME lol. As much as I rather skip everything, I made peace with the fact that it is how it works in FF game, as intended by the creator. You either like it and play, or you play another game to your liking. I heard Destiny has zero story and pretty much let you shoot kill everything and repeat the same thing over and over.

[Erepio]

ill just leave this here

ZAM: Why the choice to have players complete all the old main scenario quest to start the expansion content?

Y: I think of Final Fantasy 14 heavens whereas the second season to a television program, where as a realm reborn was our first season. So when you watch a television program, you don’t watch it from the second season, you watch it from the first season so they know what’s going on. Heavens word that’s the second season. You have your first episode of that second series is heavens word breathe right now. We talk about the story, but story is important part of the Final Fantasy series and experiencing that story is something that we want the players to do and that’s why we decided this way.But I’m as you mentioned before, we understand that it takes a while to get to that 2.55 content and play through it, and that’s why we’ve lowered the hurdle with all those things we mentioned before. We want players to see it, but we’ve allowed players to watch that first season on fast-forward, binge watch it, and get the second season.

There are shows like CSI where people can start in the 7th season, and they’ve made it so that people can start in the 7th season and not be lost. But for us it’s still our second season and we want our players to follow the story. Maybe in the future when we release our 4th or 5th or 6th expansion we can have a shortcut so the players can get to that piece, but that’s way out there – for now we’re focusing on the second season.

Video source
Text transcription of the interview

[Imoye]

Most of the newer players that I've seen have been positive about it. Gives you something to do with a real purpose. Not like WoW where you simply boost your character to 90 and that's it. I hope this game never becomes something like that.

If you don't have a day or two to complete the story, then an MMORPG is not for you.

[Catwho]

The point of the filler quests is to give folks a method of leveling their first jobs by doing short battles against 2-3 foes at a time, instead of just grinding the same few dungeons over and over again. If the filler quests were removed and the quest line shortened, then the grind would become even more tedious. It's possible to level a character entirely via MSQ and running each dungeon once without touching ANY of the non MSQ quests (although when i tested this, I did each levequest in each area once because that gave me the cash needed to buy better gear.)

[Tuathaa]

That's the point of this whole discussion. Make ALL MSQ optional so player can just go straight to dungeons and trials and access all areas without having to go through to entire MSQ fetch quest, hide and seek, lore exploration, learning backstory for those various NPCs in the game. I got news for you: THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF GAME lol. As much as I rather skip everything, I made peace with the fact that it is how it works in FF game, as intended by the creator. You either like it and play, or you play another game to your liking. I heard Destiny has zero story and pretty much let you shoot kill everything and repeat the same thing over and over.

The time it took you to write this you could have read the first post of this thread. Apparently you haven't.

[RichardButte]

Looks like some ppl wants to be the "Hero of ligth" who:

Actually, if you bothered to read any of the thread, you'd know that these people don't care about being the hero of light, and that's basically the point.

When you remember that this whole hoopla about the "warrior of light" is being made for every single player you see in the game, it makes it all a bit less personal.

I fixed it a bit

Fixed it to miss the point, sure.

The same in HW MSQ. First part is "Sightseeing through Ishgard", followed by "Sightseeing through Western Coerthas" and "Sightseeing through Sea of Clouds".
Would you also call them fillers?

No, because they introduce them to new NPCs who you likely aren't familiar with. The level 50 MSQ has you talking to mostly the same NPCs over and over and over and over, then doing boring as crap like picking tea leaves for them.

Sure, you're the warrior of light, one of the only beings powerful enough to destroy primals and quell the threat they pose to Eorzea, but you're still treated like a go-for by the quest line. They should be out picking tea leaves for YOU, not the other way around, and when they make you hand-deliver uniforms to soldiers? Sigh...

SO really, in closing, instead of getting frustrated, just go through the whole damn story, the game is a good game overall but you have to endure the painful parts.

I did. It's not me I'm worried about.

It's friends who lack the boredom threshold that I do who I'd like to play with but they can't sit through hours upon hours of a story they don't give a shit about.

And look over the thread: many others have failed to recruit friends into the game for the exact same reason, and in many cases there were returning people who wanted to try the new classes who discovered they would need to do 10+ hours of MSQ built up at 50 and just didn't bother.

I don't think people understand just how thin of a thread can bind a paying player to an MMO, but it can be an incredibly strong thread.

For example, I played Lineage 1 for about a year, despite the fact that it was a god-awful NCSoft grindfest with hackers and botters galore.

Why did I do this? Because you could tame animals in the wild and level them, and I LOOOOVED having pets to hunt with.

One of my friends (the one who has BARELY made it through the MSQ grind and was frustrated as all hell in mumble chat because of all the goddamn fetch quests the MSQ was having him do at 50) had played to ~30 in ARR and came back to play the Machinist, and...that's...the...only...reason...he...came...back.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that tons of people are playing again just for DRK, or AST, and although I've never met one, I'm sure there are some people who play FFXIV solely for the PvP. And seriously, I'd bet money that Triple Triad brought in some new players.

And that's the thing that people don't seem to understand: from a business standpoint, MMOs want to cast as wide of a net as possible because, like I said, you REALLY never know what people are going stay subbed to your game for.

Will it be work to trim the MSQ 50 or remove gating entirely (except for level, of course)? Sure. Would it be worth it? Everything I've seen in this thread suggests that it would, because it certainly couldn't HURT anything.

Again, people need to understand that, no matter how much YOU may love the story, not everyone feels the same way, yet that doesn't mean those same people won't find something else that they'd be willing to remain subbed for. In the end, that sub money pays for the development of more of the story you love so much.

"We talk about the story, but story is important part of the Final Fantasy series and experiencing that story is something that we want the players to do and that’s why we decided this way.But I’m as you mentioned before, we understand that it takes a while to get to that 2.55 content and play through it, and that’s why we’ve lowered the hurdle with all those things we mentioned before. We want players to see it, but we’ve allowed players to watch that first season on fast-forward, binge watch it, and get the second season."

Good, he's on board. Now all he needs to do is deliver on the "fast forwarding" part, because 350+ quests filled with filler and nonsense hardly classifies as "fast forwarding".

There are shows like CSI where people can start in the 7th season, and they’ve made it so that people can start in the 7th season and not be lost.

Except that this argument is fundamentally flawed because a TV show and an MMO are nowhere near the same thing.

People watch TV shows for the story and ONLY the story. I think it would be incredibly rare to find someone who watches a TV show but pays no attention to the storyline.

MMOs, on the other hand, can be played for a whole SLEW of reasons because story isn't the only thing happening in an MMO.

And the other thing, FFXIV's story, while well written, is a themepark story. It has no continuity. As I mentioned earlier, every single one of us is supposed to be "the warrior of light". It's no better than a Disney ride where an animatronic character at the end of the ride says, "YOU SAVED THE WORLD!!!!" to every carload of people that passes through.

If Yoshi-P is okay with people "fast forwarding" the story, then he should be okay with making it optional entirely.

Maybe people don't want to level through the story quest. Maybe they'd much rather chain run dungeons with friends, or do a fate or leve party with them.

The point is, if the DEVS expect that people will skip the story anyway, why not make it REALLY skippable?