Quote Originally Posted by Voltyblast View Post

It's not that I play an MMO for its gameplay or anything!

PS: I just wanted to add that adjusting the MSQ doesn't mean removing: it means, well, adjusting, fixing, improving, making it go faster; as far as I'm concerned nobody really asked for removing it totally.
What people fail to grasp is that even if the story was optional, it would take them MORE time to actually get to the level required to unlock new content, and without people who played the story telling you how to get places, people would play the game for the free trial, get nowhere and quit. There is no sub gained or lost. The MSQ serves a purpose in providing experience you don't have to spend 10 hours grinding in the starter zone just to enter the first dungeon. It's no longer 1997, content is downloaded over the internet, and not on disc. There is no reason to make the storyline content optional aside from having already done it on another character on the same account and server.

People asking to stream line the content, haven't made any suggestions as to what. I can name a few...

The Umbral-era quests have 246, of which 22 you never see because 11 are specific starting quests. Those initial 11 quests plus the Opening needs a "I've already played FFXIV before, skip the tutorial" option that is presented before the game even starts. Essentially everything up to level 15 could be streamlined into 3 quests: Find all the zones in your starting area, Join a Grand Company, Join the Scions and just make those a series of checkboxes, where the lore-parts (where you go talk to everyone, like now) could be made optional (eg a X/20 steps would be shown on the quest shopping list) where you only get the experience if you do in fact talk to everyone. If you turn in the quest early, the NPC will make an excuse of something like "Y'shtola talked to everyone you missed", and then clear the completion flags for those quests.

Keep in mind that you still have the class quests up to level 30 where you then start the Job quests to unlock skills. Those quests often have their own combat quests that you only get to play once.

Between Level 15 and 50 is harder to streamline because that's when the narrative becomes interwoven with dungeons and primals being unlocked. So you can't create a quest to unlock something you don't yet know about.

Satasha is unlocked at level 15.
Tam-Tara at 16
Copperbell at 17
and Halitali at 20 (optional), along with Ifirit

There are 20 quests between level 15 and level 20.

But I'll just go back and mention that if you're someone who skips all the optional content, you would also miss:
Unlocking Halitali, Sunken Temple of Qarn, Cutter's Cry, Dzemael Darkhold, The Aurum Vale
Along with
All the Hard Mode dungeons except Snowcloak and Keeper of the Lake.

So 9 Dungeons (7 NM and 2 HM) are unlocked by storyline, the remaining (5 NM and 16 HM) are unlocked through optional level-specific quests.

So only 1/3rd of the game's dungeon content is even locked by the storyline.

For HW, 5 of the 8 dungeons are locked by the storyline.

For the 8-player/24-player raids, only the 2 of them are unlocked by the main storyline (Castrum Meridianum The Praetorium), The rest of them have their own quest chains, and aren't very long at all.

But as far as reducing the quests, since the player already has a class quest to complete, it makes more sense to try and trim down the 1-15 quests (which unlock the first dungeon) than it does to try and trim anything after as each dungeon is 3-4 levels apart, and in HW they are 2 levels apart.

If you do all the content (main scenario and optional quests) you only have to do each dungeon once or twice to clear the experience needed to unlock the next one. Not sitting there chasing fates for hours.