MSQ teleports - A simple band-aid for discouragement of new players in ARR

[Kewitt]

I agree with se on this, if you play free to 50 currently you can get a lot of story done before you drop a dime if you want it faster pay for jump.

[Kewitt]

One thing they could really add is the MSQ giving enough experience for you to break through it without interrupting.

It's fine the way it is now for SB content, but that makes little sense for ARR patch quests.

I started a new character on a different server I was well in my 20s before the 1st dungeon. Doing mainly just msq.

[Beckett]

QFT

People defending the MSQ on the grounds of lore/"story-immersion", conveniently ignore things like, a new player who's not even completed ARR MSQ can teleport into Shirogane

If you were to ask SE to give a lore explanation for why your character can teleport to Shirogane, despite having never been to the Far East, they'd probably say something like, "You're glimpsing a moment in the future of your character."

I agree with at least the teleportation element suggested by the OP, especially since they already use it to great effect in Stormblood.

And just like that, I'm on board with this idea. Putting an aetheryte (mini or otherwise) near Waking Sands is lore breaking and kills a major plot point of the MSQ. But ending a cutscene in Gridania with a fade to black that opens back up on you already inside Waking Sands is perfectly acceptable. The player just assumes that their character walked back there, off screen, and lore is preserved while time is not wasted.

[ADarklore]

I have a better suggestion... why not give players access to MOUNTS much earlier in the game and do away with the stupid "must reach xx point in storyline to increase speed" and just give them faster speed from the beginning? I get tired of hearing people wanting everything handed to new players... it's an MMO and thus players coming in should realize it's a LONG TERM investment. I, for one, refuse to jump or rush through content because... guess what... I want to live and experience the STORY. I don't want to jump and have no clue why I'm even fighting xyz since I skipped everything... and then have to depend on others to explain everything to me. If players want to do this, there already is the ARR skip available on the Mog Station. I've played numerous MMOs where they offer easy jumps to higher levels for new players and then veteran players have to deal with tons of incoming new players who don't understand skills, leveling, etc. Also, when you skip ARR and you lose a TON of XP for leveling since the MSQ offers tons of XP; to me this is not a help for new players, but then again, I prefer to gain my XP the old fashioned way- by leveling through actual game experience, not grinding for the sake of leveling. Many times when players simply grind to level, a few weeks later they end up moving on to another game because you're burned out from all the grinding. IMO, an MMO is about the journey, not the destination.

[Gemina]

I see no reason whatsoever for the devs to go back and rework old content to condense the MSQs from previous expansions. Don't want to go through it? Buy a potion and call it a day.

As a veteran, if you want to help a friend catch up, do you wanna know how to do it? Join their party and queue as a tank if they are not one themselves. This is something in YOUR power to do to make things easier for a friend or FC mate. You can talk about all these bogus fetch quests for days, but nothing is going to delay their progression more than the queue times, especially if your buddy plays a DPS job. If you're so quick to want the dev team to drop everything they're doing to help new players, I'd stunt the requests if you are unwilling to do the same.

What the game should be doing is incentivizing max level tanks to run their roulettes. That is what is going to help low level progression for new players. Leave the MSQ alone. There's nothing wrong with it other than player impatience.

[Edax]

I see no reason whatsoever for the devs to go back and rework old content to condense the MSQs from previous expansions. Don't want to go through it? Buy a potion and call it a day.

As a veteran, if you want to help a friend catch up, do you wanna know how to do it? Join their party and queue as a tank if they are not one themselves. This is something in YOUR power to do to make things easier for a friend or FC mate. You can talk about all these bogus fetch quests for days, but nothing is going to delay their progression more than the queue times, especially if your buddy plays a DPS job. If you're so quick to want the dev team to drop everything they're doing to help new players, I'd stunt the requests if you are unwilling to do the same.

What the game should be doing is incentivizing max level tanks to run their roulettes. That is what is going to help low level progression for new players. Leave the MSQ alone. There's nothing wrong with it other than player impatience.

What the heck is the point of becoming a tank and joining your friend on a tedious MSQ fetch quest?

[Penthea]

No there is not lore as to why there aren't any mini-aetherytes in the Waking Sands. Yes, they talk about why the Syndicate hasn't placed a big one in Vesper Bay, but they don't need a big one in Vesper Bay. The mini-aetheryte can be gotten cheap on the Marketboard.

Please tell us how many towns you have come across that have functioning mini aetherytes and no big ones and no connection to big ones. You'll find the answer is exactly zero. Even the housing district mini aetherytes are connected to the network of the corresponding city's main aetheryte.

You don't know your aetheryte lore.

Also a fast way to get to Vesper Bay is: Limsa > Arcanist's Guild > Take boat directly to Vesper Bay. You don't have to ride from Horizon.

And more to the point, do they really need alienate new players with the frustrating lack of fast travel back into the MSQ quest hub?

I started playing proper in HW and I honestly didn't find the travelling tiresome. But I come from games in which teleportation has very long cooldowns, the list of venues to teleport to was tiny, and teleportation was mostly for classes of far higher level than new players. I honestly felt spoiled when I first started playing this game. Getting around is so fast and easy.

[Edax]

Please tell us how many towns you have come across that have functioning mini aetherytes and no big ones and no connection to big ones. You'll find the answer is exactly zero. Even the housing district mini aetherytes are connected to the network of the corresponding city's main aetheryte.

You don't know your aetheryte lore.

Also a fast way to get to Vesper Bay is: Limsa > Arcanist's Guild > Take boat directly to Vesper Bay. You don't have to ride from Horizon.

Doesn't mean it's in the lore that mini-Aetheryte need a big one. I direct you to the wiki: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aetheryte which does not mention that Aetheryte shards require being connected to a big one. Your own head-canon doesn't count.

Also a fast way to get to Vesper Bay is: Limsa > Arcanist's Guild > Take boat directly to Vesper Bay. You don't have to ride from Horizon.

And even you have to recognize how convoluted that is to reach the Main Story Quest Hub. I've already mentioned the ferry so explaining this to me was completely unnecessary.

[Penthea]

Doesn't mean it's in the lore that mini-Aetheryte need a big one. I direct you to the wiki: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aetheryte which does not mention that Aetheryte shards require being connected to a big one. Your own head-canon doesn't count.

But you don't use your head and think why are mini-aetherytes never completely on their own? Why are they always connected to a big one? The game may not explicitly say it, but the intention is clear.

And even you have to recognize how convoluted that is to reach the Main Story Quest Hub. I've already mentioned the ferry so explaining this to me was completely unnecessary.

No my issue was never getting to the Waking Sands. My issue mostly lies in how the quests could be condensed for better storytelling, as there was a lot of needless "go talk to this person, this person, then this person" sometimes even in the same area. That's quite silly. Some of them play like single quests broken into several pieces.

[loreleidiangelo]

For funsies I started over on a fresh alt on a different server, and let me tell you what sucks more than the random running around or whatever that the MSQ has you do - it's queue times for anything sub-30, because you're bottlenecked by no healers and unless SE does some redesign on how jobs are earned that's not going to go away. Even my alt, who I plan on playing as SCH, has to sit through 30 levels and 5+ MSQ dungeons/trials of DPS queues as an ACN for some awful reason - SE, please fix. Having no healers except CNJ start at level 1 is a massive oversight and has been since the game launched with ARR. Even with priority queue for first-timers, I'm still sitting in 10-minute queues for dungeons with every slot filled but healer, and when the MSQ is structured in such a way that you're blasted with Sastasha, Tam-Tara, Copperbell and Bowl of Embers with very little questing in between, I could see where a first-timer would think, "is this what dungeon queues are like in this game? and I can't skip them? blech" and quit.

Alternately, don't make dungeons required content for story quests, since they typically add really little to the narrative anyway.