I am so freaking bored of Shadowbringer's story

[RareItems]

i skipped all the cutscenes in this game and i still love it xD. There's a few bad things about skipping all the cutscenes thou like, do we shrink when we go underwater on Stormblood areas or why teen Minfillia's name changed to Ryne and her hair color going from yellow to orange.

I miss FFXI when they did not give us the option to skip cutscenes xD.

[MomomiMomi]

Real filler are a side stories and characters that have no actual importance or relevance to the story and its entire purpose is to arbitrarily extend a story to make it longer than it needs to be.

Just about everything in Il Mheg and the western part of Amh Araeng falls into this. Please enlighten me how the Nu Mou are important to the story.

There are quite a large amount of busywork quests all throughout. In every zone you get to you have to go do tedious, meaningless tasks. The kobolds. Finding the "keys" to Titania. The magic trolley that allows us to get through a gate that we could have just jumped over.

That's not touching on some of the other issues with the story. Like the Deus Ex Machina at the end where we go to save Crystal Exarch. One moment he's not there, the next moment he is, then he solves all our problems.

[Berethos]

Tbf, I still don't get why the trolley was made a huge deal of. We used it for all of, what, 30 meters, at roughly walking speed, and then just walked from there?

Feels more like we needed a magic rock to depress a floor-switch than an actual trolley.

That is basically what we needed...but the purpose of that section was to give room for specific character development as a lead-up to the major events that happen after getting past the gate.

The reason for our delay in that area realistically could have been anything, so long as it served to set the stage for what came next.

Just about everything in Il Mheg and the western part of Amh Araeng falls into this. Please enlighten me how the Nu Mou are important to the story.

There are quite a large amount of busywork quests all throughout. In every zone you get to you have to go do tedious, meaningless tasks. The kobolds. Finding the "keys" to Titania. The magic trolley that allows us to get through a gate that we could have just jumped over.

Without those interactions, you'd have a straight shot to whatever big problem/antagonist you're facing in every area you go to...and that's boring. A "story" where you just go straight to the big boss is no story at all.

Like this game has been doing since it started, it takes the time to show your interactions with various groups in the world the writers have created, allowing for character growth and character moments along the way - the kinds of things that end up making stories special to read, watch, or experience.

Also, in this particular expansion, a major part of the story is how you've managed to bring so many groups of people together to work toward a common goal to save their world...and that story beat falls completely flat if you don't actually go and do things that inspire the people. Kind of important that all that happens, and it's not going to happen because you waltzed through and jumped over a gate.

Arguments like yours remind me of those complaints about movies where people say "Well why didn't the characters just do this other thing that would have solved their problem/not caused an issue?" and the answer, obviously, is that if they did that then there would be no story.

[MomomiMomi]

Without those interactions, you'd have a straight shot to whatever big problem/antagonist you're facing in every area you go to...and that's boring. A "story" where you just go straight to the big boss is no story at all.

Like this game has been doing since it started, it takes the time to show your interactions with various groups in the world the writers have created, allowing for character growth and character moments along the way - the kinds of things that end up making stories special to read, watch, or experience.

Arguments like yours remind me of those complaints about movies where people say "Well why didn't the characters just do this other thing that would have solved their problem/not caused an issue?" and the answer, obviously, is that if they did that then there would be no story.

Yet Heavensward accomplishes the same things without a slew of pointless tasks.

Of course you place things in between. But you make them interesting and relevant.

[gumas]

Tbf, I still don't get why the trolley was made a huge deal of. We used it for all of, what, 30 meters, at roughly walking speed, and then just walked from there?

Feels more like we needed a magic rock to depress a floor-switch than an actual trolley.

its the character development (thancred) that they want to focus on, but yeah the trolley magic rock pushing and floor stepping plot is kinda stupid.

[Shurrikhan]

its the character development (thancred) that they want to focus on, but yeah the trolley magic rock pushing and floor stepping plot is kinda stupid.

It was just kind of one of those "but...wait, what?" moments like the warring Au Ra tribes all being within a 5-minutes' walk of each other or Doma being shown as only one village large (just due to the borders drawn on the map, more so than the limited playable area).

I just figured, y'know, we'd have a FF7 throwback with a long trolley path, such that it would be untenable to cross the narrow, valley-bridging trolley path without being pushed to high speeds by the Talos for fear of, say, the birds knocking you off to your death below. Anything that would make the Talos relevant beyond 10 meters before the gate.

Altogether, I liked the character development that happened there at therefore that section of the plot. I even slightly cared about Magnus (though, mostly just Thancred). It just... it was doing so well and then it had to drop the feasibility/payoff ball there of all places? It just felt so weird to me.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It was just kind of one of those "but...wait, what?" moments like the warring Au Ra tribes all being within a 5-minutes' walk of each other or Doma being shown as only one village large (just due to the borders drawn on the map, more so than the limited playable area).

I just figured, y'know, we'd have a FF7 throwback with a long trolley path, such that it would be untenable to cross the narrow, valley-bridging trolley path without being pushed to high speeds by the Talos for fear of, say, the birds knocking you off to your death below. Anything that would make the Talos relevant beyond 10 meters before the gate.

Altogether, I liked the character development that happened there at therefore that section of the plot. I even slightly cared about Magnus (though, mostly just Thancred). It just... it was doing so well and then it had to drop the feasibility/payoff ball there of all places? It just felt so weird to me.

It was a Spyro reference. You know, "Trouble with the trolley, eh?"

[EusisLandale]

Please enlighten me how the Nu Mou are important to the story.

Finding the "keys" to Titania.

There's that, and then there's the matter of them having ties to the tank story's Sin Eater, which in turn has ties to one of the local area's A rank hunts. World building is important.
If I'm not mistaken weren't they also planned to be one of the beast tribes we'll deal with? So an early introduction there would be important as well.

[Puppet-]

Greatwood and trolly were tough for me to get through. The only thing that got me through greatwood was Y'shtola, I didn't read a single text box during all of it though. And the trolly made me hate myself for a bit. The ending was good though for sure. A lot of people were talking about how great it is, but I just thought it was a pretty good story with its bad parts. Nothing mindblowingly amazing, nothing terrible. It gets better OP, just stick through it.

[Dualblade]

There's that, and then there's the matter of them having ties to the tank story's Sin Eater, which in turn has ties to one of the local area's A rank hunts. World building is important.
If I'm not mistaken weren't they also planned to be one of the beast tribes we'll deal with? So an early introduction there would be important as well.

Nu Mou and Pixies are indeed two of the beast tribes, Dwarves being the third and most likely the craft/gather one. On top of this the Amaro are shown to be on close terms with the Nu Mou meaning we'll also be getting more of them in the Nu Mou beast tribe story as well.