New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Penthea]

Guess what. MSQ is content. The class you play is content, the quests you take, the places you go. Its all content. Youre not being prevented from content

A lot of players tend to think "content I don't want to do doesn't count as content". This is certainly the case for some who have posted in this thread. This reminds me of players who sometimes complain that this game has no content, and then you have a look at what classes they have played and more than half aren't even unlocked. After some posts asking questions it turns out they never tried to do floor 100+ of POTD, they don't do maps, they don't do the gold saucer, they don't craft, they don't do beast tribes...they don't do a lot. The cherry on top is when their gear isn't even up to date enough to do the latest patch content.

You need to put in effort and investment. And people tend to forget that MSQ is important because its the central point of FFXIV. The whole game is built around it. FFXIV is a very plot centric mmo that isnt set up in 'episodes'. You want episodic, play WoW.

I reread some of the posts at the beginning of this thread, found some I missed and it turns out OP is actually a WoW refugee. That kind of explains a lot. In that game the real content doesn't start until you're close to max lvl. Everything before then is often seen as little other than an irrelevant road to be rushed through. And frankly because it is. The old content is most times stupidly easy to do so it's boring, and it rarely unlocks something else upon completion aside from a maybe a mostly identical harder mode version of the same dungeon. Lvling quests have even less relevance. The lvling content in WoW serves as little other than a way to gain xp fast so you can sprint to the end because the game doesn't really start until you're very close to max lvl.

I gather OP came to this game expecting it to be very similar here; that the game doesn't really start until you're 60+. But this isn't the case in FFXIV. Due to how roulettes and lvl sync work, you can play with max lvl players from the first fate you do and the first instance you queue for. And due to how everything is so closely tied to the msq you won't understand a damn thing that is going on in SB if you don't follow what happened in ARR and HW. Furthermore FFXIV has an incredible amount of side content compared to WoW, that has remained relevant even after other expansions are released, and these are unlocked as players progress through the msq.

FFXIV has a very different progression design and route. OP probably came to the game with certain expectations and doesn't seem to have realised that not all can or will be met. No one has to like the msq. But everyone needs to accept that it's there. The entire game is interwoven in it through lore and mechanics, and the vast majority of players are either okay with it or love it. The msq's role in the game won't change. Either find a way to deal with it, or play something else. Hoping for the most central element of the game to have its relevance removed is folly.

Because you arent important individually. The story just behaves that if you didnt do it, someone else did. The game makes it very clear that you are one of many heroes of the horde/alliance, where the bigger plot points are generally resolved by heroes like Thrall or Jaina and youre there to help them. Youre a hero, not the hero.

That isnt the case with FFXIV. There are other adventures, but you are, more or less, the warrior of light (if not one of the very very few WoLs.) Youre actions directly impact the overarching narrative. Its about you, the player. So it makes perfect sense you cant just jump into a dungeon cause your level is high enough.

I have some ex-WoW player friends who were not keen on the msq in the beginning, but when they understood that their character is the central point of the whole story for the game they began to warm up to it. Now they're ultra hype for any new msq content. Some of them didn't have any interest in it until much later in the game and ended up making alts so they could understand all the events that lead up to the point when they became intrigued. And a few never got interested in the story, but they just skip through the dialogue and cutscenes without complaint, because they understand the msq's role in the game and accept it.