Confirmed: ARR campaign will be pruned

[SturmChurro]

Respectfully, I did not "demand" anything change about this game. I saw this thread, and noted my support of the idea, because of my own personal experiences with the content --which clearly, many other people share, including many veteran players. Thanks for just telling me to leave though, even though I like so so so so so much about the game and will definitely be spending sub money on it regardless of your advice. c:


(Also, in what way would condensing bad fetch-quest-filler into competent storytelling, or making some of the fetch-quest-filler optional content ... be detrimental to anyone at all?)

Don't worry about it. A lot of the FFXIV 'community' have those kind of attitudes. The first response is "play another game". Any kind of criticism is somehow taken personally by a lot of the fan base. You can pretty much have little to no discussion with some of them. I learned this a long while back.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

Respectfully, I did not "demand" anything change about this game. I saw this thread, and noted my support of the idea, because of my own personal experiences with the content --which clearly, many other people share, including many veteran players. Thanks for just telling me to leave though, even though I like so so so so so much about the game and will definitely be spending sub money on it regardless of your advice. c:


(Also, in what way would condensing bad fetch-quest-filler into competent storytelling, or making some of the fetch-quest-filler optional content ... be detrimental to anyone at all?)

Take your pick: not experiencing the original story others have experienced in the past (because apparently ARR and pre-HW was so awful, yet there are plenty of veterans on current endgame. Gee, I wonder how they tolerated such awfulness) or spending resources on "pointless fetch quests" (which are prevalent on every MMO) instead of new content?

As pointed out before, many players went through the "awfulness" pretty fine. Some gave up on the game. Tough luck. You don't change the game to cater to the latter, while telling the former "Screw you, the reason many started playing this game sucks", when the data shows otherwise (active player count rising steadily over time even before ShB launch). You don't change the core of the game because new players might be used to other games and won't even give this game a chance, if the game doesn't ship them on the express bus to endgame.

[snarkomatic]

Take your pick: not experiencing the original story others have experienced in the past (because apparently ARR and pre-HW was so awful, yet there are plenty of veterans on current endgame. Gee, I wonder how they tolerated such awfulness) or spending resources on "pointless fetch quests" (which are prevalent on every MMO) instead of new content?

As pointed out before, many players went through the "awfulness" pretty fine. Some gave up on the game. Tough luck. You don't change the game to cater to the latter, while telling the former "Screw you, the reason many started playing this game sucks", when the data shows otherwise (active player count rising steadily over time even before ShB launch). You don't change the core of the game because new players might be used to other games and won't even give this game a chance, if the game doesn't ship them on the express bus to endgame.

And yet, the developers themselves seem to acknowledge that the whole 2.x ARR stretch was a strange hodgepodge of content, that a lot of it was designed around timesinks, and that it needs revisiting to become more palatable and enjoyable for people who feel gated by it. It's not me saying we should not have any MSQ at all, it's an apparently very large portion of both community and staff agreeing that changes to the ARR stretch would be preferred.

There is also a big difference between fetch quests being prevalent in every MMO (which, they aren't; ESO is beautifully free of them, almost entirely) and the fetch quests I specifically referenced in my reply to you is that most MMOs are not literally gating you away from progressing your character. In other MMOs, when you do a fetch quest, you get experience, you level, you get a new skill, tada! In this stretch of content we are discussing right now -- again, not the entire MSQ, but the ARR quests being trimmed -- you are getting experience and leveling, and your spellbook is unlocking new spells, but you cannot use those spells or do your further job quests until you completely finish the ARR quests.

You can argue all you like about story-driven MMOs, but so much of ARR is badly-put-together story that it doesn't really work for this bit of content. As a writer, I cringe every time you have to spend 30min of running around just to get information that could have been handed to you by one well-crafted exchange of dialogue between characters. The fact that the devs agree with the idea of reducing the number of quests like that kinda suggests that you're defending something unnecessarily, IMO.

It's also pretty effectively a strawman to bring up "express bus to endgame" when we're talking about something that locks you out of level 50+ content and endgame starts at level 80, so I'm going to skip addressing that. c:

[Mikhaill]

I really enjoyed the ARR MSQ, so not sure what all the complaints are about. I was engaged with it most of the time.

To add on with all are saying it's kinda boring and a slog to get through...

It's the fact that's so long and fetch questy, NEW players are detered by it and eventually drop it.
This has happened so many times. You're hardpressed to get any new friends to play this game for long.
If you want DRK/AST/MCH in HW? Welp, better haul ass for 300 hours + or so.
I don't even recommend this game to anyone until ARR MSQ is pruned. My boyfriend finds the story underwhelming in
ARR and he loves books and reading. Doesn't help when something finally gets interesting,
you're greeted with a million mundane side crap with you teleporting 4000 billion times everywhere.
Something has to give so we can have more new players more than anything else.

[Avidria]

Take your pick: not experiencing the original story others have experienced in the past (because apparently ARR and pre-HW was so awful, yet there are plenty of veterans on current endgame. Gee, I wonder how they tolerated such awfulness) or spending resources on "pointless fetch quests" (which are prevalent on every MMO) instead of new content?

As pointed out before, many players went through the "awfulness" pretty fine. Some gave up on the game. Tough luck. You don't change the game to cater to the latter, while telling the former "Screw you, the reason many started playing this game sucks", when the data shows otherwise (active player count rising steadily over time even before ShB launch). You don't change the core of the game because new players might be used to other games and won't even give this game a chance, if the game doesn't ship them on the express bus to endgame.

Dude, nobody's talking about "changing the core of the game." They're talking about taking out the unecessary side fluff out of the way of post-50 content. The fetch quests and sideshows that did little to nothing to actually advance the story and really just made things take longer - stuff that could very well be relegated to sidequests, or just shortened to trim them down.

The story wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. Most of it wasn't even memorable, for me at least. I got through it because a new expansion was out and I kept hearing how good it was and wanted to get there. And heck, I actually did enjoy a lot of the ARR story (including pre-50). I actually wanted to know what was going to happen next. It was four years ago, so I really don't remember a lot of it, but I do remember there being a lot of quests that just weren't that interesting. If I'd cared even a little bit less than I did, I'm sure I'd have just straight skipped a huge chunk of the post ARR cutscenes/dialogue because there was just that much to get through before anything interesting happened. Which I think took like 3 patches worth of content?? Looking at the list now and I barely remember anything from 2.1 or 2.2 at all lmao.

It's great there are people who enjoyed that content - but I definitely think that it had some issues. And there's clearly enough people who think so that SE is in fact going to be changing it. And who knows how they'll do that? They could make parts optional, they could cut out some travel time, heck they could even make the old version of the storyline available as part of NG+ (not sure how, but who knows). All they've said is that they're making it "more compact," and I personally think that that's a good thing. For new players, and for old players leveling alts through that content.

[LaylaTsarra]

It's overdue. Glad they are finding the time to streamline it. Moving to side quests of removing many of the non story quests would be fine with me. If they elect to remove some I also suspect they'll buff the experience for the quests that matter.

[Komarimono]

They could cut the time by 3/4 just be removing all the fetch quests I feel. I am one of those who came back late into ARR release, since felt it would fail after 1.2 so had moved onto another game. But coming back, I loved the story, but have to admit several times in the ARR ending quests I was skipping the useless fetch quest text. Just let me fight titan again, let me talk to the others etc. But don't have me running around doing this and that, having little to no impact on the main story.

[Limiloo]

As much as I love the story in this game, it really is a huge lump to get past for new players, so I'm happy to see it getting pruned. And I trust that they will keep the integrity of the story. Much cheerlead!

[HWalsh]

I did the 100 quest ARR thread.

It is too long.

Simply put.

Was it too long for the original players? No. It came out in bite sized chunks.

Is it too long now? Yes.

The rewards are negligible and it is an unnecessary hurdle that stops players from reaching the first expansion.

The only sections needed are:
1. Establishing a connection to Isshgard.
2. The near-assassination of Nanamo.
3. The rescue of Rauban.
4. The awakening of Nanamo.
5. The hard mode fates.

Playing tag with kids? Totally unneeded.

[foussi]

Hearing about that made me happy.
Nobody shall suffer through so many fetch quests again.
Not saying ARR is bad but the filler fetch quests are absolutely tedious. Most of the fc member in the fc I am in quit coz they couldn't keep going.

Maybe the quests will be turned into cutscenes.