Quote Originally Posted by glitteringcosmos View Post
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.