Friends of mine, new to the game, becoming discouraged by STORY QUESTS

[ruskie]

The way I understood it is there will be a story shortcut for at least HW to $NEWEXPANSION - probably a cut down, no fetch quests style thing. Still probably a ton of stuff - though I do hope they leave the option of doing it normaly as well.

And I'm guessing ARR story they might leave as is other than removing unnecessary fetch quests along the way as well. Or making them sidequests.

At least that's how I'd crunch it down currently.

The other approach is - here's a NPC talk to them - watch a 2 hour cutscene aka movie that will push you through the story.

There is a bit of a lore hook they can add that in as well... around the time you join a GC.

[MeiUshu]

you know doing MSQ only and skipping cut scenes doesnt require centuries to reach 50 and entry into HW if you need some stuff to do to reach next stage then go through bestiary, fates eventually one or two leves. It'is pretty fast in fact. Once you have that out of the way, you never ever need to do any of the quests available not a single one. Fates, dungeons will get any subsequent class anywhere. This is valid as well when you are in HW, even if a little slower then in ARR.

As Vespar said, it took me 3 days to reach HW on an alt. I mean, if people register, they should know they register for the whole saga, otherwise what is the point ? As some said, maybe people are not in the right place ? Even if SE is starting a new saga, allowing de facto people to start mid-way, it wont help OP's friends as they do not seem interested in the lore but solely in the raids so whether you can start mid-way or not is a mute point in this case (my understanding of course).

[Riardon]

I'm sorry to say this about your friends but they most probably chose the wrong game for them. If they expect FFXIV to be a game where you create a character and you just pew pew in the endgame in very few days then they chose the wrong game. Final Fantasy was always about the narrative and the storyline. It's a story driven MMORPG. You are supposed to enjoy your way up to 60 lvl without rush. Your friends simply expected something that FFXIV is not. It happens. Different people different tastes. That being said I'm personally against "story shortcuts" and cutting content in order to make your way shorter to 60. EXP points are way easier to get now. You can also leave the side quests for later.

[Nestama]

While it has already been confirmed that 3.X will not be required to play 4.0, it would have been silly of SE to force players to finish the HW story before they could play the second expansion. Especially if the new Jobs are what interest the players the most.

"Wanna be a {Dream Job}? Finish 3.X first, which requires you to finish 2.55 first. Should take you... idunno. A month if you don't skip cutscenes?"

[Wilhem]

I think TC left already and won't be coming back but I'll add my two cents anyway.
Can't you do the Coil until they've finish 2.x storyline quests? It's raiding and it's pretty fun too and it'll give them something they apparently are craving for to do until they reach Heavensward's raiding content. Also no point in rushing about 3 years of content it's the best way to end up being burned out and by doing only the story quests at a "normal" rate they can pretty much be done with them in less than a week.

[Spawnie]

story is what makes this game amazing

[Powe]

If they buckle down, call work to say they're sick, and grab a diaper, (From what i heard) It only takes about 30 hours to finish 2.1 MSQ to 3.0, 40 if you include waiting for dungeons and letting the story sink in( 2.55 ending alone is 5 hours of rocking back and forth) its not the longest but it ain't the shortest.

[Reinha]

They are losing patience as they really want to experience some high end content. I want to as well! Just seems very very tedious to have so much rely on unlocking through story

You are putting too much emphasis on character level and item levels. This game has a synch feature that allows you to experience content at the intended difficulty even if you've leveled (character or gear-wise) past it. So why not grab your friend and a few others and give Coil a chance? Or Crystal Tower if you want a smoother introduction to raiding. You can team up for level 50 primals as your friends are unlocking them, or join in for dungeons. You can level up your own alt jobs with them. You can farm ponies together. You can start the level 50 relic quests and progress together. Introduce hunts to your friends and check that they have unlocked things like maps, sightseeing log and challenge log.

You may not realize just how much maxed out players step back in to level 50 content for achievements, glamour or simply fun. There is no rush to reach end game because this game offers so much more than that.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

To the OP, when I took a break and came back as much as I appreciate the story FF brings us all I wanted to do is be able to run the new dungeons and stuff they had just added but first I had to catch up to them through questing. I hated it, hours and hours of rushing and skipping through cutscenes accompanied with mindless A to B running. I can see how your friends are turned off by it, some people love the story but the reality of it is most people don't do the story until there is a patch locking content behind it.

[CodingSquirrel]

Having just finished my grind from level 1 to the end of Heavensward (not the extra stuff patched in after 3.0, I'm still working on that) I feel like I feel like I have to agree with the OP.

A few of us in our guild were getting sick of the direction things were moving in SWTOR, so about 4 months ago we picked up FF. A couple of them were already max or near max level when we officially moved over and after the first two zones they instructed me that I should only be following the main story. So that's what I did, aside from dungeons and stuff I played exclusively the main story. The 1-50 story is great; it kept me entertained and interested. However, at hitting the post-50 quests leading up to Heavensward it was like hitting into a brick wall. The story was boring, not a lot was happening, most of the quests were filler, and you get next to no XP from it. It completely killed my excitement on the game and I actually could barely bring myself to log in. In fact, most of the time I didn't, for a little while most nights I found myself playing something else because anything else looked more fun. I had to force myself to in order to move forward and catch up with my friends.

Having those kind of filler quests makes sense when you're spacing it out over months of patches, but doing it all at once is an entertainment killer. All the people in this thread touting the story I think are completely missing the mark with their dismissal of the problem. Are you really going to hold up quests like "Hey great warrior of light, the most powerful person in the land, I forgot to mail out a letter. Can you please pick it up off my desk and put it in the mailbox for me? Thanks" as the pinnacle of story-based MMOs? Or, "hey I know we can talk over linkshell and all that but could you come to this town over here I want to talk to you. Great, now that you're here I'd like to go to other town on the other side of Eorzea to talk some more, meet you there. Well that was fun, let's go back to the original place now to finish our conversation." Whereas the ARR content and the 3.0 content kept me engaged and interested, the stuff in between had me wanting to drive nails through my eyes. It was an incredibly dull chore to get through. If they cut down those quests to just the important ones (probably 20% of the whole) then I could see that content as worth doing. But as it stands it serves as nothing more than a momentum killer for people trying to play through the game and hopefully get to max level.