MSQ Needs Further Condensing

[Barwara]

If I understand correctly, one of the main arguments behind condensing the MSQ is being unable to play with friends/friends giving up on the game too soon.

I myself invited two friends to the game. As I said before, I've recently completed HW (not the patch content), and my two friends just now finished ARR (also not including the patch content). They are nevertheless the target market of the game - drawn to story telling, so going through the narrative and doing things step by step doesn't bother them at all. And I've hyped them, so they are eager to continue. They also have less time to play than I, so I believe if we had started at the same time I'd probably still be ahead of them.

But the point I'm trying to make is: I'm not expecting them to catch up to me. Instead, I invite them to do old content with me. Old for me, not for them. I think it's better for me to adjust to their level and what they have unlocked so far, than pressure them into rushing through the game. Plus, they are my friends, so I still have fun doing lower level dungeons and trials with them. And seeing them fail at mechanics. And sliding job guides their way. :P

I think that's a good way to encourage friends to play with you and keep them engaged. If you invited them to play, you should adjust to them instead of asking them to adjust to you.

[Iscah]

Grind through 100-250 hours of story vs skip all cutscenes, and do quests like a rat in a skinner box, or pay $115

OR

condense the MSQ

Firstly, these are only "the two options" for someone who doesn't want to play the game for the story that is intended (by the creators) to be a large chunk of the game.

And even then it's a massive oversimplification. One of those things is what someone would have to go through if they want to play endgame without the preceding story, and the other is what you expect the devs to do to cater to those people - when there is simply no obligation for them to do so.

The edits made to ARR and post-ARR are their oldest and most notoriously grindy part of the whole game. Older players routinely warned newbies that "the grind through post-ARR is terrible but it gets better in the expansions". The patch quests were designed to be time-fillers that often didn't drive the story forward.

That is what they put the effort into fixing thus far. It does not mean that they intend to give the same treatment to the rest of the story.

I believe they've said they would look at it for Heavensward and beyond, but I can't see major edits happening. They're not going to pull out whole plot arcs, and I don't think there's much room to condense things - at most we would lose some busywork quests.



Secondly, you keep mention this terrible $115 price tag for a new player. Let's look at that a bit closer.

I'm not sure of the exact cost breakdown in American prices so let's say $50 for the game, $25 for each skip and $15 for the subscription.

Everyone getting into the game has to pay the $50 for the game itself. That's not part of the cost of choosing to skip to endgame.

New players get their first month of subscription free, so they're not paying that at all - and even if they were, that's another thing that everyone has to do equally whether they're playing the RPG or skipping it.

If they need to catch up to friends quickly, then the MSQ skip is going to be necessary but they may be able to get away without a job skip if they're willing to spend their first week or two of gameplay levelling up their character. A friend could probably help them power-level at the beginning - I'm not sure how fast that goes with a class other than blue mage, but it would at least be enough to get past that initial barrier into the levelling roulette.

The cost of choosing to skip isn't $115, it's $50 at most and you can look at it as the would-be cost of the few months of subscription it would take to get through the story without having to actually put the time into it.



Also, even if the 250-hour story was condensed down to something like 150, you sound like you'd still be complaining about what was left of it.

(For the record, 100 hours is a length that would be seen as a selling point for a single JRPG, and FFXIV is essentially four of them back-to-back at this point.)

You realize the trailer for Heavensward says all a new player needs to get into the game at that point? All of ARR can be condensed into a little sip, a collapse, an escape, and standing at the threshold of frozen gates.

That’s all that’s needed for a new player to have a good time in heavenward and beyond.

That's a quick summary so you can be dropped into the start of Heavensward without having played ARR, yes.

That does not replace ARR or tell you everything you'll ever need to know to understand what happened. It will not stop the player from being unclear about the details, if they skipped ARR but want to pay attention to HW's story. It certainly won't stop the player from being confused once they reach Shadowbringers without having been through the Crystal Tower, which I believe is included in story skips now.

The current expansion is "the good part." That's not endgame. Content balance in earlier eras is a pale shadow of what they were when they were current, and there's no way to experience that content as intended outside of perhaps faux hollows.

That's a very gameplay-focused way to be looking at what constitutes "the good part". From a gameplay perspective, maybe the older expansions aren't as good as when they were current, but that has no impact on them as stories (except perhaps the pacing of some battles). From a storytelling perspective, the plot, characters, scenery and music haven't changed. Heavensward was a great story when I first played it and it's exactly the same story now.

So I went over in my head what could be cut from Stormblood while staying narratively sound. [...] That is just a small amount I can think of but cutting them would undermine a lot of character moments some of these character drop off hard as well not getting another chance to be involved in msq, lost of world building also happens when you go about cutting too much.

That's exactly the issue with asking for large-scale trimming of the story. You trim something back to "the bare minimum needed to understand the plot" and you lose everything around it that builds up the characters and makes the plot richer.

You can't just pull entire events out of the plot and say "we're doing this for the sake of some people who don't enjoy the story anyway so they want it to go quicker".

There are certainly things that could be trimmed out but on a much smaller scale. One that jumps to mind is when you're sent to talk to the storyteller to learn the history of the Xaela but he won't talk to you until you've chased down his lost sheep. The sheep add nothing to the plot and 5-10 minutes of running around to your playtime, so that could easily be trimmed or turned into a sidequest and it would improve rather than disrupt the flow of the story there.

[MilkieTea]

snip

I really like this breakdown. Very politely worded and it puts things into perspective.

[Ultrazen]

I quit this game twice trying to get through the MSQ, I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm stubborn and came back, but how many people do? One of the big problems with the MSQ, especially early on, is how much running you do. There is a severe disrespect for the players time. There are so many quests, that are literally 'run for 10 minutes, get one line of dialogue, run back for 10 minutes'. To me, this happens to the point of being insulting. It gets particularly bad early on when you still don't even have enough money to teleport back, which just happened to me last night. I started a new character, on a new server, just to get a feel for what they did to the MSQ, as it's always been my warning to people that ask me if they should try FF. Same old stuff.

To argue that even half of those quests are indispensable to the story is pretty laughable. ALL of those quests, especially early on, should auto complete instead of making you go back to the original quest hub. Any MSQ that has you running back to the original NPC, only to then run back out to the area you were just in, should just issue you the next quest in the series when you complete the previous one. That alone would cut the time it takes in half.

It's fairly obvious, that the MSQ was designed, at the time, to pad the game. That padding is certainly no longer needed, it's a real barrier for new players trying to get into the game. The biggest problem for retention for new players in this game, is how rudimentary the combat is early on, combined with how much time you spend literally doing nothing but running. This game still makes a horrible first impression.

[SturmChurro]

I quit this game twice trying to get through the MSQ, I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm stubborn and came back, but how many people do? One of the big problems with the MSQ, especially early on, is how much running you do. There is a severe disrespect for the players time. There are so many quests, that are literally 'run for 10 minutes, get one line of dialogue, run back for 10 minutes'. To me, this happens to the point of being insulting. It gets particularly bad early on when you still don't even have enough money to teleport back, which just happened to me last night. I started a new character, on a new server, just to get a feel for what they did to the MSQ, as it's always been my warning to people that ask me if they should try FF. Same old stuff.

To argue that even half of those quests are indispensable to the story is pretty laughable. ALL of those quests, especially early on, should auto complete instead of making you go back to the original quest hub. Any MSQ that has you running back to the original NPC, only to then run back out to the area you were just in, should just issue you the next quest in the series when you complete the previous one. That alone would cut the time it takes in half.

It's fairly obvious, that the MSQ was designed, at the time, to pad the game. That padding is certainly no longer needed, it's a real barrier for new players trying to get into the game. The biggest problem for retention for new players in this game, is how rudimentary the combat is early on, combined with how much time you spend literally doing nothing but running. This game still makes a horrible first impression.

Finally some REAL experience, rather than nostalgia. Completely true! Good feedback. All the running around, PLUS the combat SUCKS. It's a really bad first impression. Really, it's a combination of factors. Unfortunately, this game has a lot of archaic systems in place.

[Kamatsu]

Also, even if the 250-hour story was condensed down to something like 150, you sound like you'd still be complaining about what was left of it.
(For the record, 100 hours is a length that would be seen as a selling point for a single JRPG, and FFXIV is essentially four of them back-to-back at this point.)

You can see this is true with a reply from someone else after your post was made, where they refer to the MSQ as the 'padding' to the game. This basically implies that they view the MSQ as pointless drivel that they have to get through to get to the 'real' game (that is how I interpret these comments).

So yes, even if SE did cut the story in HW, SB & patches between to reduce total time-to-complete from say ~250 hours down to ~100-150... these same people would continue to make these threads demanding the MSQ be further butchered and cut down and made into side-content / non-existent / ignorable.

These are the same ppl who are now complaining that WoW forces ppl to do story in their latest expansion, rather than letting them skip it all to get to the endgame raiding.

That's exactly the issue with asking for large-scale trimming of the story. You trim something back to "the bare minimum needed to understand the plot" and you lose everything around it that builds up the characters and makes the plot richer.

You can't just pull entire events out of the plot and say "we're doing this for the sake of some people who don't enjoy the story anyway so they want it to go quicker".

Makes real sense right - lets butcher the story for ppl who do not like the story, and don't want to play the story, who will continue to ask us to butcher the story so they can skip the story. Also, sorry to the majority who like the story... but we've butchered the story for ppl who don't want the story in the game, even though they are a vocal minority.

[Barwara]

I quit this game twice trying to get through the MSQ, I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm stubborn and came back, but how many people do? One of the big problems with the MSQ, especially early on, is how much running you do. There is a severe disrespect for the players time. There are so many quests, that are literally 'run for 10 minutes, get one line of dialogue, run back for 10 minutes'. To me, this happens to the point of being insulting. It gets particularly bad early on when you still don't even have enough money to teleport back, which just happened to me last night. I started a new character, on a new server, just to get a feel for what they did to the MSQ, as it's always been my warning to people that ask me if they should try FF. Same old stuff.

To argue that even half of those quests are indispensable to the story is pretty laughable. ALL of those quests, especially early on, should auto complete instead of making you go back to the original quest hub. Any MSQ that has you running back to the original NPC, only to then run back out to the area you were just in, should just issue you the next quest in the series when you complete the previous one. That alone would cut the time it takes in half.

It's fairly obvious, that the MSQ was designed, at the time, to pad the game. That padding is certainly no longer needed, it's a real barrier for new players trying to get into the game. The biggest problem for retention for new players in this game, is how rudimentary the combat is early on, combined with how much time you spend literally doing nothing but running. This game still makes a horrible first impression.

As a new-ish player, I can attest to that. The fetch-like nature of most quests in ARR and post ARR is ridiculous. I completely understand your frustration, and I find it to be the one of the weakest points in FFXIV. I personally even stopped doing sidequests within a few weeks of playing, unless they lead to unlockable content quests. It's really a waste of my time... I'm not going to deny that even though I got through ARR and feel like I enjoyed it, what happened in there feels like a blur, because there was a lot of mind-numbing tasks you had to do. Nevertheless! I got through that. I guess other aspects of the game as well as the swiftness in levelling kept me hooked and everything gets better in HW. (As someone who never played an MMO with this type of combat system, the combat/class systems are what really intrigued me and got me hooked. So I wouldn't say it's terrible.)

As someone said earlier, the MSQ still offers all of the world-building you need to truly enjoy the expansions, so I'd argue here that 'improving the quality of the quests' would be better than just 'condensing' the MSQ. Yet, do we want the devs to spend time on that, instead of spending time creating new content/improving new content on past errors? :/ How realistic is it to ask them to spend more time revisioning the oldest part of the game?

[Reyketi]

As a new-ish player, I can attest to that. The fetch-like nature of most quests in ARR and post ARR is ridiculous. I completely understand your frustration, and I find it to be the one of the weakest points in FFXIV. I personally even stopped doing sidequests within a few weeks of playing, unless they lead to unlockable content quests. It's really a waste of my time... I'm not going to deny that even though I got through ARR and feel like I enjoyed it, what happened in there feels like a blur, because there was a lot of mind-numbing tasks you had to do. Nevertheless! I got through that. I guess other aspects of the game as well as the swiftness in levelling kept me hooked and everything gets better in HW. (As someone who never played an MMO with this type of combat system, the combat/class systems are what really intrigued me and got me hooked. So I wouldn't say it's terrible.)

As someone said earlier, the MSQ still offers all of the world-building you need to truly enjoy the expansions, so I'd argue here that 'improving the quality of the quests' would be better than just 'condensing' the MSQ. Yet, do we want the devs to spend time on that, instead of spending time creating new content/improving new content on past errors? :/ How realistic is it to ask them to spend more time revisioning the oldest part of the game?

At this point, I find revisions to be unlikely, as opposed to a boost-scenario.

Perhaps a tutorial of sorts could be introduced, and you could be given your abilities over that tutorial, and then when complete, you're set to, for example, level 70, ready to do current content.

[SturmChurro]

You can see this is true with a reply from someone else after your post was made, where they refer to the MSQ as the 'padding' to the game. This basically implies that they view the MSQ as pointless drivel that they have to get through to get to the 'real' game (that is how I interpret these comments).

Did you actually read the person's reply? To me, they didn't say the MSQ itself was padding, or imply it as "pointless drivel". They were referring to the walking back and forth, as they say:

One of the big problems with the MSQ, especially early on, is how much running you do. There is a severe disrespect for the players time. There are so many quests, that are literally 'run for 10 minutes, get one line of dialogue, run back for 10 minutes'.

To argue that even half of those quests are indispensable to the story is pretty laughable. ALL of those quests, especially early on, should auto complete instead of making you go back to the original quest hub. Any MSQ that has you running back to the original NPC, only to then run back out to the area you were just in, should just issue you the next quest in the series when you complete the previous one. That alone would cut the time it takes in half.

It's fairly obvious, that the MSQ was designed, at the time, to pad the game. That padding is certainly no longer needed, it's a real barrier for new players trying to get into the game. The biggest problem for retention for new players in this game, is how rudimentary the combat is early on, combined with how much time you spend literally doing nothing but running. This game still makes a horrible first impression.

[Driavna]

Did you actually read the person's reply? To me, they didn't say the MSQ itself was padding, or imply it as "pointless drivel". They were referring to the walking back and forth, as they say:

It's a recurrent problem with MSQ (and quest in general) in FFXIV. Gameplay between cutscenes is usually nonexistent till a solo duty, dungeon or trial is unlocked. The last 24m raid related quest all had my doing was going from A to B and use an emote.