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

[Cwestcott18]

I skipped the story, I didn't even know half the people died unless they said something in forum, the voice acting is soooooo painful to listen to, the side events and quests are more interesting, but guess everyone to their own.

[CodingSquirrel]

What I don't really understand: Why do you (not speaking of only you CodingSquirrel) have to hurry so much? Why is it so important to reach endgame so fast?

Short answer: we're a raid team, that's the content we want to play together.

Long answer: we came here together because we wanted a different game (that's still getting updates) for us to raid in together. This is the only game we were collectively interested in moving to. Not being at a point where I can participate in the current raids has meant that our raid team has been mostly in limbo for the 4 months since we moved here. We also can't really fill holes or expand the team when some of us are still stuck behind the story grind. We've certainly had a lot of fun in the mean time, doing dungeons and such, but it's not the same as doing challenging raids. The dungeons are fairly simple, and you only need 4 people.

It's not that I want to skip everything else to get to endgame to complain that there's nothing left to do, it's that I want to do all (well most) of the content in the game, but some of it happens to be locked behind completing everything in the story first. In my ideal world, I would have been able to quickly get to the level I needed to participate in raids, while at the same time being able to progress in the story and all of the other content at my own pace. I don't (or didn't, since this is the first week I'm raid ready in FF) raid hardcore, only a couple nights a week. All of that other time is when I would normally be doing things like crafting, exploring, leveling alt classes, running the story, etc.

That's a little tangential to the thread topic and I'm not going to suggest that everything needs to be restructured so that you can skip ahead of the story for doing content like raids, but I do think that SE should consider improving the system they have. Acknowledge that there is a ton of filler in their main story which waters down both the fun of doing that story as well as the quality of the overall story itself, and do away with it as a requirement for progressing in the game. Make them optional sidequests, they progress the story just about as much as the average side quest anyway.

[Niwashi]

I see it as a problem with this game, makes it very anti-pick up and play in a sense.

WoW you can just grind to cap and raid instantly, here you have to spend a month or two going through all the filler and cutscenes.

I don't see it as "anti-pick up and play" so much as "anti-pick up and it's already over". Endgame is just what the name says, it's where you're stuck after the game has ended. You've run out of content and have to settle for just biding your time by repeating the same few things over and over until more content comes out. It's the gaming version of busy-work, and only exists because it takes longer to develop new content than it does to play it. That this game has a comparatively longer section of actual gameplay before getting stuck there is one of its biggest advantages over WoW.

[bass9020]

A lot of the story is filler. Remove the filler, you have a much more fluid story. Remove the story however? Honestly no: having a campaign is always appreciated, whether you follow it or not.
Regardless, there will be people who won't like the story and will skip it, as well as people who will like the story and won't skip it. Not everyone will like the same story as you do.

Infact one of the main reason I skipped the story was due to the fluff content that was really boring to do and, in my opinion, simply "bad". However if it had less meaningless actions or less silly quests to do, I wouldn't have quit at Coerthas, as it was the point where I just couldn't handle it anymore and moved forward. My sister as well had issues following that part around. Oh and we're both lovers of stories in videogames, especially rpgs: we just happen to dislike this game's story.

PS: if someone pulls out the "Story gets better after" arguement, my reply is "20-40 hours of fluff for reaching the good parts is a flaw"

The funny thing is we had this in 1.0. The story was every so often and wasn't hugely related to fetch quests. Then people complained it wasn't enough and leveling was too slow. Fast forward to 2.0 and look what we have.

[Chalbee]

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?"

I'm glad there are story walls. I enjoy the story, and as others have said, it's a Final Fantasy game. However, THIS was a little rude, to lock 3 jobs behind story progression. I bought this game because I saw a friend's Astrologian and fell in love. I was a little pissed when I found out it wasn't a starting class.

[Derio]

I wonder how the story will play out for that. Since 3.0 wont be required for 4.0. How will the story transition from 2.55 to 4.0?

[ohmRICE]

I wonder how the story will play out for that. Since 3.0 wont be required for 4.0. How will the story transition from 2.55 to 4.0?

In Mabinogi you could skip the first three Generations (chapters of the game's main story) and you'd get a brief summary of what occurred during each one, but at the cost of any titles/rewards/achievements you'd normally receive.

Edmont de Fortemps narrates Heavensward so they might very well just have you sit through one long cutscene as he tells you what happened and you pick up at the beginning of 4.0. But then that raises the issue of y'know, required levels, the 3 Heavensward jobs...(shrug)

[Annie2732]

I despised doing all the story quests to be able to play Heavensward. There were times where I felt like quitting the game. I played a lot of different mmos and i did not play any for the story. Not all mmos require you to finish the story in order to play and enjoy what you enjoy doing. I pretty much skipped the entire story to be done with it, the entire experience felt like I was forced to finish it to finally play the expansion. People play for different reasons, different strokes for different folks. The number one reason why I play ffxiv is not for the story but because of the cross controller setup and being able to play on console.

[bass9020]

Why do all MMOs have to be the same? This is something ill never understand ever and will never accept it. I play FF because its an FF game I don't go in thinking oh I'm going to play this like WoW or Rift or Tera. Then sit here and complain because the features aren't the same. Play those games for what they offer just like play FF for what it offers.

[Derio]

Exactly, if 4.0 starts off at areas LVL 61. Any player who skips 3.0 will have to fate grind until they get closer to lvl 60. But I do think that would encourage people to buy HW, even if by then HW would be less than 20$