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

[Tigra]

honestly i dont see why people want the story quest optional... it takes you to every single zone in the game where you can get every port all while taking you to 50.... and giving you money although i do understand some of the "fetch" quests but those are in every MMO and you can usually just skip all the cutscenes and such

[Madjames]

If you cant even muster the patience to clear (and learn how the game works) in the 2.0-2.55 content, your gonna suck at 3.0, be bad at your class and be carried by everyone.

The game needs its training wheels, deal with it

Wrong.

The MSQ teaches nothing regarding your class. I learned my class, rotation, and how to play it thorugh watching FcOb fights over and over again to get down the timing and rotations for my class before I even hit 50. NOTHING in the MSQ teaches that. Your wrong.

World first friends of mine who are 60 right now are not failing in 3.0. They have ESCed through every quest there is. They are doing great. I do the same. I skip and will do great in dungeons in raids.

If the story was so important then we would not be given the option to ESC through it. The MSQ should be optional for those that want it and those that do not want it. Forcing the story-hugger single player playstyle on us is not a good move. SE may be getting subs but this will be short lived if they keep the game the way it is now.

[RichardButte]

If you cant even muster the patience to clear (and learn how the game works) in the 2.0-2.55 content, your gonna suck at 3.0, be bad at your class and be carried by everyone.

The game needs its training wheels, deal with it

I'd agree if the MSQ actually trained people to do anything, but it doesn't (except maybe how to use retainers...).

The L50 MSQ did absolutely nothing to teach anyone about anything. TBH, the individual class quests do far more to teach players about their abilities, but even those don't teach you how to use them IN a quest as you only earn the new ability after completing the quest most of the time.

Also, guildhests are designed to teach people how to play the game, but the MSQ oddly doesn't even require them until a player hits 40 or so.

[QiLymePye]

Yes SE is known for their story, but right now the subs they are trying to get that they don't already have are the instant gratification seekers, the ones that like to just play and get something out of it. The ones who don't see this game as a job. Now, like I've been saying all along, I'm not advocating for the removal of the entire story. I like the story, its awesome to me. But after hitting lvl 50, the story stagnates because of the insane amount of useless and time-consuming quest that were added to stretch out the game for endgamers. I'm not saying get rid of all of the quest after lvl 50.

What I'm saying is that in order for SE to justify new players having to spend weeks playing the game (thats if they played a ridiculous amount of time per day) they had to give the new players something from that expansion right out of the box. If I was new, I would feel like the expansion was made ONLY for the veteran players and that SE manipulated me into buying this game and expansion as though I could enjoy it in its entirety right at purchase along with others. Don't forget, many of these players are not only new to FFXIV, but new to MMO's.

And its very disconcerning as a new player when you advertise all these cool things and what I can do and who i can play with/as and I buy the game and I'm stuck behind all this story just to catch up with my friends that might already have been playing the game. Before anyone says "You should have informed your friends about the requirements" etc., its not my/our responsibility as player/players to tell others what is required to play this game. This is an SE product, they have the responsibility to inform consumer all that they need to use their product, which they didn't. Bad marketing strategy.

[Zabuza]

Yes SE is known for their story, but right now the subs they are trying to get that they don't already have are the instant gratification seekers, the ones that like to just play and get something out of it. The ones who don't see this game as a job.

These types of customers ruin MMOs. There are games out there for such people. FPS and Facebook games. Why does SE need those types of players again? A game of instant gratification = no sense of reward, accomplishment, or progression. Despite popular belief, this game does not need 7-10 million subs to flourish. Hell, they don't even need 1 million, though if I recall I think the subs are around 2.5 million now.

[Havenae]

These types of customers ruin MMOs. There are games out there for such people. FPS and Facebook games. Why does SE need those types of players again? A game of instant gratification = no sense of reward, accomplishment, or progression. Despite popular belief, this game does not need 7-10 million subs to flourish. Hell, they don't even need 1 million, though if I recall I think the subs are around 2.5 million now.

I agree to an extent. But unfortunately this industry now has false notions of success. No MMOs do not need millions of players to check a profit. However if your game does not have millions of players it is not viewed as successful. If your game is not viewed as successful, new players are less likely to come in. If new players aren't as likely to come in, your game suffers attrition. Old players get bored, they quit, they move on to other newer games, ect.. If no new players exist to fill those spots sub numbers drop.

Unfortunately, this business depends a lot on opinionated perception from the gaming community as a whole. It doesn't really care about numbers or quarterly reports because most gamers are ignorant to those things.

I'm an older gamer. I'm all for games being rewarding and requiring time to reap those rewards. But there was a time a while ago when that dynamic shifted and younger players took the reigns and got to dictate what a game should be. What I've learned is you can hold ideas of what a game should be, but if it doesn't remain successful there wont be a game for you to hold those ideals for.

Not that FFXIV is in any real danger of closing up shop, but there are things that can be improved. MSQ is one of those areas.

[RichardButte]

Yes SE is known for their story, but right now the subs they are trying to get that they don't already have are the instant gratification seekers

I would have to disagree with this.

None of the players I've tried to bring into FFXIV are "instant gratification seekers". Quite the opposite, in fact: these are players who have spent months and months on raids and would no doubt do the same thing in XIV.

The problem is not that there's no "gratification", the problem is that, for player leveling from 1-50 who's already a skilled MMO player, there's very little entertainment value in the game. It's a tour-de-force of BOREDOM, and that kind of thing may have been fine for players who have no lives, jobs, or are huge FF nuts who (will choke down any amount of drudgery because "it's a FF game"), but for players who just want to play and enjoy a game with their friends and have very little free time in which to do so, there's just not much there for them.

I'm not even a FF fan myself, and the only real reason I stuck around until 50 is because I love the game's economy. Had the crafting and gathering systems not been as awesome as they are, I would've quit a while ago. Leveling with my fiancee also helped a great deal.

While HW's story is actually pretty amazing, the ARR storyline is "meh" at best, feeling more like an excuse to string together a series of boss battles than it does an actual storyline.

Bottom line, most players don't need 50 levels of tutorial to understand how to play the game, and all that tutorial actually does very little to teach you how to play the endgame itself. If the story isn't grabbing you (and one of my friends who left around level 30 confessed that he left for exactly this reason), then you're really just slogging through a long, boring grind while any hope of "fun" looms eternally in the distance.

I can't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that...

If you read the earlier interview, Yoshi-P understands that this will be an issue, but he seems to only believe it'll be an issue after 5-6 expansions when it's in fact an issue right now.

New players who have nothing to tie them to the game aren't going to spend 10+ hours on 350+ fetch quests just to try out a new class that they may not actually even LIKE.

These types of customers ruin MMOs.

No, snobby, arrogant people with a "gated community" mentality ruin MMOs.

But as I pointed out, no one is trying to bring "instant gratification" seekers into the game anyway.

[Ryamatsu]

The solution to the this problem isn't cutting story missions but allowing cooperative gameplay. In FFXI we could pretty much run every single story quest with your friend besides the "Maat fight". My wife and I play together in coop games and did everything together in FFXI from day one. However, in FF14 we're both kinda disinterested in the story because it pulls us away from each other. So I'm having to rush to catch up to her or vice versa. I wish the story content would've been coop with difficulty sliders based on if your friends join. It would also be interesting to see the story from other perspectives.

I consider the story line quests as a rite of passage. It's not really all that fun but it's something we all had to do. I recommend playing music in the background or watching a good show on netflix while doing the grindy parts. I killed every episode of IT Crowd while doing most of the 2.x fetch quests. It's not the end of the world to grind through them but once you finish them you do feel somewhat accomplished. Get to focus on the things that you want to do now.

I personally prefer to level all jobs up. I really love doing dungeon runs and talking with people. I hate solo content, I don't like how they force this on us in this one.

[Luvbunny]

The MSQ fine as it is. The patches MSQ need to be reduced. For those who want to skip everything and just go do the raid, suck it up and play the MSQ to get there. While "veteran players" of other online RPG who thinks the "tutorial" boring as hell, well - that tutorial is not made for you, it is for the 99% of new players out there. So just bite the bullet, skip all the CS, and finish it. Bottom line on this discussion: 2.1 - 2.55 MSQ should be reduced, get rid of garbage filler quest and make them optional.

[Luvbunny]

The solution to the this problem isn't cutting story missions but allowing cooperative gameplay. In FFXI we could pretty much run every single story quest with your friend besides the "Maat fight". My wife and I play together in coop games and did everything together in FFXI from day one. However, in FF14 we're both kinda disinterested in the story because it pulls us away from each other. So I'm having to rush to catch up to her or vice versa. I wish the story content would've been coop with difficulty sliders based on if your friends join. It would also be interesting to see the story from other perspectives.

FFXI is structure the same way, most of the "fetch quest" you can do solo. The battle however require a group. The same in FF14, only dungeons and trials need a group, the rest you can do on your own time when you feel like it - as a break from grinding dungeons.