Quote Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace View Post
So you're one of the people who are upset because this game actually has a plot ergo plot requirements to get to certain checkpoint? Man it's REALLY gonna suck come 4.0 when you have to do 2.0 AND 3.0's content to get to 4.0 isn't it. lol
And, again, your one of the people that completely fail to understand the reason behind the resounding piles of complaints about the issue. I understand your quippy response (this is thread #555,555 about the same issue), don't get me wrong. yeah at times it feels repetitive. but your response shows that you haven't been paying attention to the root of the primary complaint with most players.

No one is complaining about having a story. that's silly...MMO's have stories.
No one is complaining about finishing the stories.
No one is complaining about realistic threshold requirements. note realistic.

Just about everyone is complaining about the severe amount of tedious "go here, fetch X" quests in the MSQ that do absolutely NOTHING but take up time. It's painfully obvious that these quests were made back when there wasn't any actual game progression, and they wanted people to have something to do solo to fill up time. this is simply not needed any more. On top of that, the quest rewards in exp are almost insulting given the severe exp necessities of the new level. There is very little if any real reward for doing those quests. you get no gear that will benefit you from the required instances, and the only things that really benefit (aside from the measly gil rewards) are the materia.

And when you look at the myriad of other MMO's out there that HAVE STORY, that HAVE PLOT, but unlike the archaic and convoluted design of FFXIV, they provide you with ways of getting the story and NOT LOCKING YOU BEHIND DOZENS OF HOURS OF MEANINGLESS QUESTS just to see the content that you have already met the level requirements for. This doesn't even count the actual quests that matter...there are very few. as a matter of fact, most of the "plot" you talk about is advanced in cut scenes, that have NOTHING to do with the actual quests. This is what people are frustrated about. a dozen hours or more of useless quests, and 30 minutes of cutscenes, and the only thing that's really important to the plot is the 30m of cutscenes.

every lvl 50 should be able to walk into the new areas. Every lvl 50 should be able to check out the new sights, the new classes, etc. Every lvl 50 should be able to continue on their crafting journeys...all of this WITHOUT having to do 15+ hours of quests between lvl 50 and....oh yeah, lvl 50.

The story should not be required to unlock areas. there are plenty of MMO's that have much better story and plot then this one, that do not lock the new content. They allow exploration and discovery as much as your capacity at that level allow (a.k.a you won't be soloing any lvl 53 mobs at 50, so lvl 50 players won't necessarily be lounging around in the dravinian forelands). This is solely an SE thing that has caused a ton of strife, and needs to be adjusted.

Example: in SWtOR (one MMO with a better story then this one IMO), when they released Rishi, they had a group of 3-4 instances and some dialogue that were pertinent background for the expansion. Now...the first thing they did right even before the expansion, was make the pertinent stuff (things you had to do), take as little time as possible, and provide meaningful plot advancement...without wasted fluff. they had a ton more stuff you could do to flesh out the stories with the quests, instances, raids, NPC dialogues, etc. but you didn't have to do it. you could immerse yourself in the story, but you didn't have to. the main plot was locked behind a very simple and efficient set of 3-4 runs, with dialogue in-between.

the next thing they did right was they provided a solo option for those instances once the expansion came out. Sure, it was EZ mode. But it gave you a way to see the pertinent and important content on your own time, on your own pace, and it didn't take 15 hours. i actually could get through it in a few hours on a single character. and I still got great story, great plot development. There were exactly ZERO run here and get this quests...ZERO wasted time, yet you got a full story with romance, character development, and even some mystery. it was all there, and it didn't take 15 hours.