The removed parts of ARR MSQ didn't save any time at all

[Iscah]

I believe someone did the math and about 20 hours of questing was removed in the revamp, so you are wrong.

20 hours sounds far more probable.

I ended up getting sidetracked with hunt logs, but I've done exactly one MSQ quest so far on an alt: the Lv20 one that sends you to check out the sylphs because they might be summoning Ramuh.

I remember it was originally something like "drop in at Fullflower Comb to pick up a gift for the sylphs; get sent to slay a random ochu because sylphs like ochu root; back to Fullflower, probably more talking, now you can continue to Hawthorne". We may have also had to check the beehives.

Now it's "go to Hawthorne".

I think I've saved twenty minutes already.

And my goodness, if the rest of the game has been edited like that then it is absolutely going to speed through compared to the original pace.

Lets think about things when was shadowbringers and when was the crystal tower series? Lets see like 4 years apart.

One thing you will find if you are paying attention to the story is that content being old does not make it irrelevant. Things that seemed unimportant at the time come back much later and become relevant again.

For a new player experiencing the story, they're not four years apart anyway.

OP is far too sensationalist for my tastes, but I agree forcing the Crystal Tower raid series is a mistake.

I've heard several would-be players complain about it when I recommended this game to them.

Complain in what context? Did you recommend it but say "the story is great but they force you to do raids" and they didn't like the sound of that?

Seriously, it's part of the MSQ now. Would you complain if that same story was added as a new MSQ patch with some dungeons attached to it? That's all it really is now, except instead of being made from scratch as part of Shadowbringers, they've woven in older content and made it part of the core story.