MSQ

[Shougun]

Having played through all the story to this point, and having replayed ARR since the culling of the quests, sure there's a lot of quests in there, but very little is just filler at this point. In fact, I'd counter that there's more filler in the quests within and immediately following Heavesnward have more fluff than ARR at this point. Like there's a whole series of quests in Heavensward about how Emmanellain can't seem to take no as an answer from Laniaitte feels more like side quest filler than anything that has any relevance to the main quest... and that's just one example.

Haven't done it since the trimming, are those, imo, annoying food and 'go fetch Minfila' quests still there? I'm aware they were trying to say you start out as a nobody, but personally at the time they were current content I still found those quests very "I don't care, I reeaaallly don't care". I try to read everything, unless massively sleepy or too immersive accent lol (I do not like Limsa pirate talk .. XD, if it was spoken I bet I would love it though), but some of those quests had me a bit eye rolling "this is clearly side quest material, kill 10 basement rats". In a more polished single player setting they would often have nice comedy and "pizzazz" (or not exist at all), but I'd not give those quests that award of great moments of levity (I know someone was making the example of contrast, which is a good thing to be considerate of, might see that in like a Ghibli film where they spend some time looking at the environment for zen, but I don't think the moment was good enough to call it a good use of zen). Maybe semi goofy but purely memorable (for myself) by how annoying they were- they really felt like "go pick up the book on the shelf opposite to me". Some of that may have lended to why I felt Minifila was just whatever, taskmaster sure.. and perhaps realistically so, but I'm trying to play a game not experience the hyper-realistic internal growth of the coffee boy rising up through the ranks lol. You can tell that story more excitingly, and still not miss the notes of starting out as a small town boy (thankfully this phase fades, for the most part, they happen less and are more memorable in good ways later- I think it was last expansion had a really cute dinner moment).

If most of that was trimmed, then that's amazing lol.

Though I still stand by the collective amount, regardless of any trimming, in the long run, is going to be an issue. Say, as at least Yoshida has said so much, they keep FFXIV the flagship- meaning maybe another 5 years at least. Give each expansion 50 hours, if you're not beelining, ignoring everything else, and skipping all the cutscenes / dialog, and ARR which is a bit longer like 75 hours (or more). 75 + 50 + 50 + 50 = 225 hours to get to Endwalker. Hey Endwalker does cap off all those previous hours though, so that's good. So + 50 more though to the next expansion where it should be starting a new story. 275 hours. You can watch Friends, the entire collection, twice, before you could catch up to current content. I wouldn't be too shocked if they don't do something about this in Endwalker, especially given they're giving away ARR and HW for free, but I would really be baffled if they did it for 7.0. Some of 'the best' single player games to have ever existed, where every moment is a treasurable moment, take less time to 100%.