ARR: new player perspective

[molleafauss]

Just my 2 cents after finishing the ARR main quest for the first time.
I started playing recently and I find the game enjoyable, but ...
Sorry if I repeat things that have been said in the past.

The first 20ish levels are fine: the main story, the first 3 dungeons, they're good. What the game is great at - at that time - is holding your hand and showing the various things of the game. An experienced player like me will go fast on some things, but some other new to the game and to MMO in general will be able to understand things bit by bit.
The side quests of the classes are brilliant, there's a little story and it's really enjoyable (played archer/bard and marauder/warrior).

Level 20-35: what a drag. Getting to Toto-Rak is a pain. The Haukke Manor story feels pasted on (dungeon is ok) and the plethora of fetch quests are really boring. Brayflox is a good dungeon again in a really really un-heroic piece of storyline. And then Titan is a freaking hard fight (hardest I found until now), great indeed, but really painful passing it.
And then ... plot twist! Nice plot twist (predictable? maybe), juicy but...
It all resolves at level 47 onward, the whole 35-47 is another painful slog, especially Coerthas, it diverts your attention to something else, you're hoping to get to the bottom of the plot and the story keeps only going sideways. Damn. Stone Vigil and Garuda are the only enjoyable parts in that long fight with boredom.
And then it all resolves abruptly in 3 instances one after the other: Westwind (shortest I've seen), Castrum Meridianum and The Pretorium. With all lieutenants packed in, with the whole response to the Empire threat packed in a lot of cutscenes in the same couple of dungeons.
That could have been better spread, the "Eorzea rising" could have arranged to take levels 40-50, get into each castrum with each grand company and mabye battling each lieutenant independently (Rythan, Nero, Livia), leaving Gaius, Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea together like they are now.

Honestly, the last two dungeons being 8-man with forced cutscenes are a bit of a letdown, lots of high level people darting through, and me and my friends were not understanding what was happening... we got lost a few times and just skipped ahead when the major fight started ... meh! (Nothing against high level people, I know I acted like this in other games so guilty as charged, just perfectly clear that is bad when it happens to you).
I understand why 8-manning them, as most of the coming trials for the follow up quest will be 8 man, and these were meant as a "teching" experience, but together with all the cutscenes (stop yapping, Gaius, will ya?), and all the bosses packed together, the overall "story" ending was pretty ... underwhelming.

I know this won't change and the quest reduction coming with the new patch will not address this (creating few dungeons from scratch isn't an easy task), but damn what a great potential spoiled!

[AduroT]

The Coerthas stuff is an important setup for later.

[TeraRamis]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

[LaylaTsarra]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

[TeraRamis]

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

There's definitely a lot of fat that could be cut. You could probably streamline the story down to about 8-10 hours without losing anything profound.

[MistakeNot]

I can't drag my fiance through it kicking and screaming - like she simply doesn't like the story.

I'm sorry. I know ARR has its fans... but it's a garbage narrative, particularly when compared to HW and ShB. Honestly, I wonder how many people don't ever really get into the game because of the monotony of the MSQ for those first 50 levels.

If people dislike the MSQ for the first 50 levels that much, they won't like the rest either.
Sure, the storytelling is a bit more focused in HW, but it is not all that different.

[Refth]

I'm recently in the same boat, and completely agree.

But you're not done with ARR yet (the worst is still to come, apparently!) - there's another 100 Seventh Astral Era Quests (post-Ultima content) to go through until the first expansion.

I was fully prepared for this and am now committed to the game (having bought the full release) but yeah, I won't be rolling any alts in a hurry.

[Klaleara]

I think we need to see what they do with the ARR revamp coming soon with 5.3. One has to hope they've spent a good amount of time deleting and redoing quests. It's too much of a slog for new players who I'm sure would like to get to newer content.

Honestly, I think the actual gameplay needs to be done before the quests. The quests can be a drag, but hte fact that you only get 2 abilities for the first 20 levels for many classes is outrageous.

They need to add in at least 2 types of directions a player can go by 20, AND have a class mechanic of sort to at least keep combat interesting. Give Lancer a buff they also want to keep up, and give them the high attack, and the dot combo MUCH sooner as an example.

[TeraRamis]

If people dislike the MSQ for the first 50 levels that much, they won't like the rest either.
Sure, the storytelling is a bit more focused in HW, but it is not all that different.

Actually, I detested the MSQ of ARR so much that I quit the game for 2 years shortly after finishing it the first time - despairing of the game ever being more than this wooden vehicle for bad storytelling. It's only because I'm a bored MMORPGer who occasionally revisits stuff that I came back.

HW and ShB might be slower than some stories, but they at least have the same level of depth and character development that you see in other Final Fantasy RPGs, replete with some really interesting plot twists and turns. ARR is almost devoid of any of these things - the only time the story really pays off is the banquet sequence, and I imagine that most people who were unmoved by the narrative (or not at least stubborn enough to finish in spite of it) didn't get even half that far.

[Saefinn]

We should be getting a rework of ARR, there are parts that are a clear learning curve for the developers. A friend new to the game found it was a slog and we juat reassured that it gets a lot better for it in HW.

Nowt wrong with the plot itself, it could better streamlined to clear some of the filler, which I believe is what they are trying to do.