Can we start getting serious about having ARR restructured?

[Hezzlocks]

A lot of people cite the Titan lead up quest, but that's a huge block of lore and worldbuilding. Heck, those guys test you because regular Scion non-Echo recruits and even Flames actually take down Ifrit he's summoned so frequently. So they can't be sure that was just some fluke, but they can't let you know you're being tested, either.

Like, people miss that the way they beat Titan was to throw people at him until he went down, meanwhile having to kill their own tempered comrades. That's how they beat Titan. On a mountain of bodies.

Granted. But they can test you in a way that feels more relevant than "I'm putting together a bit of a feast, go get me some wine and cheese" which then leads you to running back and forth through the jungle trying to help that one lalafell make the perfect wine. The reasoning is solid enough, but the execution is flawed and makes the whole thing feel like just a bunch of pointless filler content.

[MistakeNot]

Granted. But they can test you in a way that feels more relevant than "I'm putting together a bit of a feast, go get me some wine and cheese" which then leads you to running back and forth through the jungle trying to help that one lalafell make the perfect wine. The reasoning is solid enough, but the execution is flawed and makes the whole thing feel like just a bunch of pointless filler content.

Actually all the lead up to Titan is quite fun - especially the second time you do it, when you know what is coming and you can laugh at the obvious frustration of the characters.
During those missions we also get to learn a whole bunch of lore about various things.
Far less of pointless filler content than the endgame gear threadmill is.

[MistakeNot]

I was playing 2.0 when it was fresh. It was a slog then too. Easy or not there were so many pointless fetch quests and just general faffing about it's a wonder Frey didnt come sooner to tell every one of those lazy time wasting sods off.

So which are all these "pointless fetch quests"? I am asking because in the game i have played there aren't many pointless quests.

[Hatstand]

An alternate solution would be to decouple the MSQ from access to game content. Let people who are level 50 start the Heavensward job quests, rather than letting them become a level 60 character with no new moves since 50. Let people unlock dungeons and trials by walking up to the entrance. That way people could complete the MSQ at their own pace, and enjoy it, rather than feeling like it's a barrier to playing with their friends, and they're letting people down by not skipping all the cutscenes.

[MistakeNot]

An alternate solution would be to decouple the MSQ from access to game content. Let people who are level 50 start the Heavensward job quests, rather than letting them become a level 60 character with no new moves since 50. Let people unlock dungeons and trials by walking up to the entrance. That way people could complete the MSQ at their own pace, and enjoy it, rather than feeling like it's a barrier to playing with their friends, and they're letting people down by not skipping all the cutscenes.

Problem with this is that it would really mess up the story timeline. We can, for example, not enter Ishgard until certain events in the MSQ has made it possible for our characters to do so. For many dungeons, the reason our characters go into them, is beacuse of events in the MSQ. Etc, etc.
Now, some people will of course not care at all if they skip backwards and forwards in the story, because they did not care about the story in the first place.
For many of us it is quite important to have things happen in the right order though, and for us your "solution" would make the games story a tangled and near incoherent mess.

[Hatstand]

Problem with this is that it would really mess up the story timeline. We can, for example, not enter Ishgard until certain events in the MSQ has made it possible for our characters to do so. For many dungeons, the reason our characters go into them, is beacuse of events in the MSQ. Etc, etc.
Now, some people will of course not care at all if they skip backwards and forwards in the story, because they did not care about the story in the first place.
For many of us it is quite important to have things happen in the right order though, and for us your "solution" would make the games story a tangled and near incoherent mess.

So provide a toggle. Let yourself play in "Main Story Mode" or "Freeplay Mode", and switch whenever you're in one of the three starting cities. People who want the story experience can do so and those who don't mind can leave it be. And if you like the story stuff but you want to run a dungeon with your friends you can toggle out, go run it, then toggle back and go back to your story.

[MistakeNot]

So provide a toggle. Let yourself play in "Main Story Mode" or "Freeplay Mode", and switch whenever you're in one of the three starting cities. People who want the story experience can do so and those who don't mind can leave it be. And if you like the story stuff but you want to run a dungeon with your friends you can toggle out, go run it, then toggle back and go back to your story.

Sounds horrendously complicated to get right. A big "No" merely for that reason.

[Jeeves72]

It's not about getting through the story content faster to play with friends. It's about making the early portion of the story more tolerable -- and maybe even enjoyable -- to experience.

[Emmanellain]

Well, don't take it the wrong way but if certain people are complaining about not being to just skip straight to endgame quickly, then this game probably is not for them. The fact is, FFXIV is a FF game first and a MMO second, and FF games are always story focused, even the MMOs. Here normal MMO trappings of everything being about endgame raiding and stuff for 'shinez' and streetcred is only one part of the package (and is really only a minor part, if Yoshi's comments in the past about the amount of players really doing endgame content, let alone completing it, is any indication).

The story is an important part of that, and is meant to guide players gradually into the action, not just dumping everything into their lap at once and leaving it at that. Those who state that the game really is about endgame are sadly mistaken, and they're the ones who usually end up most disappointed and bored.

There is much more to this game than running Savage and Ultimate raids and trials. The game is a journey, not a spectacle, and the journey to get to endgame is just as important, if not more so, than the destination.

as a huge MSQ fan myself, i too see the importance of the story, but I really didn't need to sniff the chocobos and go to Coerthas to pick up leaves so Tataru could brew tea to calm the other scions before the move to Mor'dona.
The entire feast quest line could be shortened, along with other questlines that are more or less uninvolved with the plot.
I want to keep the development of our core cast as much as possible, but there is a lot of fat that can be trimmed, along with fixing the MSQ dungeons at the end of ARR.

[MaraD_]

As someone who really enjoyed 2.0, it was definitely flawed by a LOT back then.
Since then its lost a LOT of its original charm.
Content was made more easy to the point of button mashing and ignoring mechanics.
Content is now ignored, due to lack of reason to do it.
And general teamwork has been over simplified, to stick to "synchronized soloing" in team content now.

2.0 isnt the same as it once was.
Also, it was never great to begin with. It was just good enough, for me to love, but I clearly knew others wouldnt tolerate its short commings.

Pretending its perfect as is, or some "filter" is BS.

Starting fresh now, only works if u never played an MMO, and loved JRPGs only.
Minor filler stuff can be shortened, or removed, and thats not a big deal to do.
SE doesnt want to allocate resources to it, but they need to.

What SE REALLY needs to do, is spice up the early storyline, to match 1.0 a bnit more, in "tone" (not cutscene quality)
Things like kids being hurt by the elementals, and questioning if wood sin is a real thing or not. (etc)

Right now its so overly simplistic, its just liek someone trying to abridge the storyline, while giving you homework on trivial stuff.
But they trivial stuff outweighs the frequency of their abridged story by 5 times or greater.

They COULD have just told the actual story a bit better, and not lean so heavy on the filler.

Either way, its coming to bite them in the butt today, as they lose sales. (Which I assumed would be the case, back in 2.0)