MSQ Needs Further Condensing

[LaylaTsarra]

This is what happened to every friend I brought here, even after the pruning they did. It probably wouldn't be as bad if you could atleast quest together but you can't, so many solo duties, everything is just so single player.

There are 3 different level skips for different prices. It's pretty easy to skip the story you don't want to do or skip all of it to SHB. A level skip isn't really needed and you can certainly help them level to 70 there are lots of options in game as I'm sure you must know where you can level together. I seriously doubt you'll ever get an optional free story skip for this game. It's simply not going to happen.

Those skips are currently on sale through January 26th.

They just finished ARR and whether or not they have plans to do other expansions remains to be seen. I doubt they'll go back and revisit ARR anytime soon. I've been doing part of that leveling a couple of alts to 30 and I must admit they did a pretty good job of eliminating a lot of the really annoying quests or shortening them. I can't speak for past level 30 given i'm not planning on taking those alts past getting a mount and being able to fight with them.

[glitteringcosmos]

There are 3 different level skips for different prices. It's pretty easy to skip the story you don't want to do or skip all of it to SHB. A level skip isn't really needed and you can certainly help them level to 70 there are lots of options in game as I'm sure you must know where you can level together. I seriously doubt you'll ever get an optional free story skip for this game. It's simply not going to happen.

Nor should it. It's a major part of the game, and the people most whining about wanting to skip it are the same people refusing to acknowledge that the option to skip IS THERE, They just have to pay for it. Why should other players have to suffer a reduced experience through what some are suggesting regular trimming, losing out on the same story that players who happened to start earlier got--all because of the people who can't be bothered to actually play through the game? And don't even get me started on the "story is the weakest part of the game" argument. That's a personal opinion--objectively speaking, FFXIV has some of the better storytelling of any mmo, and Shadowbringers is among the best. It's not lauded with accolades for nothing.

[GeminiReed]

That's a personal opinion--objectively speaking, FFXIV has some of the better storytelling of any mmo, and Shadowbringers is among the best. It's not lauded with accolades for nothing.

So were SW:TOR and The Secret World and see where they wound up. The former went so far as to only be about story and bled out. No MMO can stand on a single aspect nor should it sacrifice other activities to support it.

Square is well aware that their monolithic story is costing them in acquisition and retention. Those metrics are critically important to measure growth and to cover attrition. A growing game makes for happy investors while a shrinking one makes them cranky to point where they feel the need to meddle. They told us that their metrics indicated that the pruning and compression they did was needed so I think it's safe to say they're concerned.

Maybe you've got so much IRL cash to burn that throwing it away on a paid skip seems reasonable. I'm not one that considers "pay to stop it make hurting" a reasonable concept no matter how cheap it is. It looks like enough other people agree with me that Square shifted resources to address it. IMO they didn't do nearly enough, it's still a massive slog that will chase people away.

Unfortunately I think you're right in one respect. I'm not sure how much more they can outright remove or compress. At this point I think decoupling the MSQ from gating group content (and vice versa) is the better course of action. The lore nerds get to keep their story while those uninterested in it can play with their friends.

[glitteringcosmos]

Maybe you've got so much IRL cash to burn that throwing it away on a paid skip seems reasonable. I'm not one that considers "pay to stop it make hurting" a reasonable concept no matter how cheap it is. It looks like enough other people agree with me that Square shifted resources to address it. IMO they didn't do nearly enough, it's still a massive slog that will chase people away.

I don't have a ton of money, and I think it's silly to assume I do just because I think that the paid skips are reasonable. But why pay for a game and then expect the creators of the game to hand out for free a way to not play a major chunk of that game? People who WANT the skips have the option to buy them. Those that don't want to skip, play the game it was intended to be played. "Pay to make it stop hurting" is a ridiculous way to look at it. Why would you buy a game, then pay for a subscription, if you go in with the expectation that you're going to hate this part of the content? At that point why even bother with this mmo and not go looking for one that better suits your expectations? In my opinion it's ridiculous to expect the creators--in this case SE--to bend over backwards to accomodate such a thing.

It boils back down to the fact that this is, at its heart, a JRPG before it's an MMO. That is why the content is story gated. On top of that it's a 10-year-old game with ever-releasing content. Going into the game not expecting to be playing some catch up is an onus on the player, not the developer.

[Tuska]

Cash shop noise

We aren't talking about cash shop items are we? We're talking about pruning/making the story non mandatory. If you would like to discuss that feel free to let me know.

If you don't do quests you aren't playing the game

Spamming through quests is not "playing through the game" a person still has to go from lvl 1 to max level, that is playing through the game. Regardless of if it's spamming through quests, mob grinding or dungeon grinding getting to max level is playing through the game.

BDO has very little story, people still go from lvl 1 to past soft level cap which takes longer than anything in this game, with only doing a few quests max. Did they not play through the game? Is that game not a mmo? How do you guys think people are playing other mmos with optional story? That are all doing better than XIV player base wise?

Making it optional does not hurt anyone, at all or else every other mmo on the market would be dead and gone. The amount of MSQ had to be a problem, hence them removing some of it, one thing businesses will not do is extra work if it doesn't benefit them at all. The retention rate had to be horrible and the feedback had to reflect too many MSQ to get caught up.


Also most people know they will have to catch up is one thing to gate them with story (long ques if dps which is out of their control) and another to gate with actual progression which is what most people play mmos for...progression.

[Ammokkx]

Irrelevant nonsense

Why yes, I agree.

EDIT: since the above post got edited, for anyone in future:

The reason I put that there is because Tuska had originally quoted LaylaTsarra's post like I just quoted the above post. Now that that bit of context is lost, feels like I should put this disclaimer here so I'm not just being a dick for no reason.

[LaylaTsarra]

We aren't talking about cash shop items are we? We're talking about pruning/making the story non mandatory. If you would like to discuss that feel free to let me know.

Read my post more carefully.

[Tuska]

Read my post more carefully.

Nah, people are discussing pruning and/or making the MSQ non mandatory and the first thing is cAsH sHoP. It's not ridiculous for people to want a mmo, that's marketed as a mmo to operate like a mmo without paying $25 (Idr the actual price) extra on top of a sub game. If the first thing you can say after reading the stuff people have posted is "cash shop" you didn't have anything of value to add to the conversation and we can leave it at that.

[LaylaTsarra]

Free Skip Noise.

Oh i did. I certainly did address the issue of pruning the msq's. Your pushing your free skips isn't flying in spite of your snarky remarks. They will never make the story non mandatory in this game.

[Masked-dingus]

Nah, people are discussing pruning and/or making the MSQ non mandatory and the first thing is cAsH sHoP. It's not ridiculous for people to want a mmo, that's marketed as a mmo to operate like a mmo without paying $25 (Idr the actual price) extra on top of a sub game. If the first thing you can say after reading the stuff people have posted is "cash shop" you didn't have anything of value to add to the conversation and we can leave it at that.

Except you will never have free skips in ffXIV, SE has noticed that a lot of people will pay for the actual cashshop skips, and they want money, so as long as you will have people paying for skips, you will never have an optional MSQ