Hot Take: The MSQ grind is too long and its harmful to expanding friend groups.

[Shougun]

My personal opinion? If Asmongold of all people, who absolutely no one thought would get through ARR and it's post 2.0 slog can do it, anyone should be able to.

I think there was a mythos of Asmongold that was spread ahead of him that, since I didn't know much about him either, thought was true but having watched some of his stuff I don't think really was that accurate. I get the strong impression that his actual fans, which perhaps some were here and saying... lol, he was always going to be fine with ARR.

His comment on how he played WoW vanilla and found it fine, and I've seen him reference WoW story a lot and seems to care about story even though he's a RaiDeRr.. Knowing more about him, I don't think I would have had any doubt he could make it through the story. It was going to be something else like graphics or combat pacing that might have been the real culprit in the end.

Though I say that as someone who hasn't followed every video or what have you, just watched a few because I find all of this recent FFXIV stuff fascinating and kind of exciting. It's a cool opportunity for him and others who wanted to play something else but felt compelled to only play one game or else suffer viewership.

I hope the game, and company, can capitalize on this in a way that is best for everyone (though such payout is going to take time, games are like big trains lol).

Yup comparing someone who is getting paid for it to normal people who try it for fun completely reasonable..

Sort of a tangent point but sometimes I find it a bit disturbing to design the game, entirely, towards people who's jobs are to play games. That isn't to say their influence isn't important, or weird things like that, but if someone who plays a game 10 hours a day is like "this grind is nothing"... I'm thinking you should take that comment with ten million tons of salt when comparing it to normal players lol.

Another angle of that is streamers, of popularity at least, have a very easy time getting the bodies to do content. So the perspective that something is fine because 'they' can do it, isn't really, again, accurate to the player base at large. Something that normally has issue getting people involved is going to be flooded when a big streamer is interested, it doesn't represent the normal situation.

Their opinions are still worth hearing, as is everyone's, just that some of what they experience is abnormal gameplay experience due to the situations that they are in (like Asmongold gets to have master loot on and everyone is fine with that, which isn't an insult to him, better use of his time streaming, but that's not a standard experience where we all get to have that).

[Aneshda]

What is the Point in Playing a Game and rushing through it?
Skipping the Story is like reading only the first Site of a Book and then just the last site.
How will you know why you had to do all the things, that you done?
The Story reveals it all, enjoy every moment of it. Endgame can wait.

[Shougun]

What is the Point in Playing a Game and rushing through it?
Skipping the Story is like reading only the first Site of a Book and then just the last site.
How will you know why you had to do all the things, that you done?
The Story reveals it all, enjoy every moment of it. Endgame can wait.

Imagine a new marvel movie coming out, Witcher game, whatever.

You can often jump in deeper and still understand 'most' of the game. I was paying close attention to ShB and I strongly believe people could have understood the majority of the expansion without playing any of the past ones. Though the impacts would have been a bit dulled. The expansion brought up a lot of stuff again in short recaps, which would have provided context for most people if they were lost.

Some people do start late, like when there are anime shows on TV, before the internet, you just started wherever the heck they were at and decided if you wanted to watch it thereafter.

Starting not at "1" isn't all that uncommon. A lot of book series have guides because people were like "I didn't even know I started at 6, I love this stuff, what is 1?" lol (often because the author doesn't start at 1 either xD). It happens all the time across all sorts of mediums.

When content is designed around that concept it's obviously a smoother experience, and FFXIV is not entirely made that way- which is a benefit in some ways because you feel a stronger overarching thread, but to say it's impossible I think is entirely untrue. I could easily imagine someone skipping a lot of ARR start paying attention in HW and still be having a great time.

Naturally as a big fan of say LotR and you say "I've only watched the last movie" I'd be like WHAT NOooooOoo YOU HAVE TO WATCH THEM ALLL! And I can't wait to tell you about the Valar. lol. But -it can be done- and it -is done- in many mediums.

To be clear, as some will assume I dislike the story just because, I do like the story and if you've the time and patience I recommend starting from the ground and NOT using the skip. But I can easily imagine myself in a different situation (putting yourself in another's shoes, not your own lol) where if I saw say LotR3 in theaters, heard a lot of good stuff about it, and thought sure what the heck, but then being told I have to watch 3 hobbit movies and 2 other Lotr movie first before I can enjoy this third one that was easily accessible and was the ONE I was interested in.. I can imagine that moment where I say "go pound sand" lol. Which of course is not true, I'm certain many would enjoy the movie out of sequence even if some of the pay offs rang differently due to that misaligned sequence. It's a barrier to entry, maybe it's a good one (certainly is if you're pre-set on the idea of a long haul journey), and certainly I don't think at this exact moment due to the popularity boom causing any big problems (lots of fresh blood playing together), but... I bet there are people out there who would be loving the game but got hit by that barrier and noped out. And generally most content doesn't require such a tall barrier, honestly FFXIV is probably one of the tallest I've ever seen in modern gaming.

[Darthgummibear]

I doubt you'll get much sympathy for this viewpoint on here.

[Kyrj]

There is a storyskip if you want to skip to current expansion. /endthread

And I highly recommend it. Buy the skip, set aside a Saturday and watch the entire story in one go. Then you can go about doing stuff with your friends and FC. Nothing is worse than seeing
"Doing doggo farms, who wants in"
"Ooh me"
"Oh sorry you're in Stormblood but not far enough to actually join us, see you in a few weeks or whenever we feel like doing dog farms again"

[SpanishInkwehsitor]

What is the Point in Playing a Game and rushing through it?
Skipping the Story is like reading only the first Site of a Book and then just the last site.
How will you know why you had to do all the things, that you done?
The Story reveals it all, enjoy every moment of it. Endgame can wait.

The story is great by MMO standards and if your foundation is built on that, you’re gonna get wowed. But if you come from a JRPG base. a large part of 14’s story is par or lower. Square themselves beat the whole Rebellion vs Empire thing into the ground with FF as a whole long before 14. All you need to see is the FF meme where 3/4 of the games are described as “Star Wars, but X” to get what I mean here.

Then you toss it questionable stuff like them not being sure if Y’shtola should die tragically or not. I found that stuff hilarious, but I like laughing at corny stuff.

[Seera1024]

And I highly recommend it. Buy the skip, set aside a Saturday and watch the entire story in one go. Then you can go about doing stuff with your friends and FC. Nothing is worse than seeing
"Doing doggo farms, who wants in"
"Ooh me"
"Oh sorry you're in Stormblood but not far enough to actually join us, see you in a few weeks or whenever we feel like doing dog farms again"

I don't think that that's bad, though.

That means, when I get through the story, I've got new goals to work toward until the next bit of story comes out.

So what if I can't participate in dog farms today. I'll be able to do that later. Because a good FC or a group of good friends would be able to coordinate some time to help me get the dogs I want when I'm at the appropriate level and story progression to do so. It may not be the first day I'm ready to do it, but I know it will happen.

And a good FC and a good set of friends will make sure they do a wide variety of content to ensure that there's something for everyone to do as a group.

But that's just my take on what a good FC and a good set of friends should be.


But I'm not against those who do skip - as long as they've put in the research to know what it means and be pretty sure that they'll still enjoy the game after doing the skip(s). It is the right decision for some people. It's just not something that you can fully take back once you've done it for the story skip.

[Ranaku]

There is a MMO that would suit these people, World of Warcraft.

Fact is MMOs build up content, when ARR came fresh out we had no post arr content. It was delivered in big patches with months of time between them. So ofc every patch was new good fresh content, which nowdays seems to be much cause it build up and is available all at once.

So still, you can boost. You can skip almost all cutscenes in the entire game. You aren't forced to deal with any of the story. I have like 10+ alts all at lvl 80+ and it took me like half a week to push them through the story with skipping like every cutscene and all the dialoge. It's not that hard.

But if you are a new player you might want to experience the full story and for that they should take time. Why should something be cut down that your friends experienced before? If you want to catch up to them what would it bring to cut down expansions like WoW does so you reach them but you don't have any idea who the Lich King is cause you never played WotLK or why Uther is in the afterlife. Or who the heck is that green dragon? And why is this moongirl so angry at this weird undead lady?

So yeah, XIV offers you everything you want. You can boost your char. If you don't want to pay money you can skip through the content and get to ShB in like a week or two. And if you want to experience the full game which content is valid to this day cause of the roulette than that is also an option.

No need for XIV to become inconsistent crap like WoW.

[kaynide]

It’s been said, but just throwing in my 2 cents anyway:

1) If you are in such a rush to play current content with your friends, you have options to skip to said content.
2) if your friends don’t want to play down to your level… well… maybe need new friends?
3) if you do decide to story skip, there is not much of a point wasting hours catching up on story because you will burn out of the game in about a month. Seriously. There is not that more to do that is exclusive to level cap.
4) this is at the end of a current expansion cycle. Even the endgame content that exists has mostly been done to death by those who do it regularly. Just wait for Endwalker and boost to 80 when it releases.

[Iscah]

The story is great by MMO standards and if your foundation is built on that, you’re gonna get wowed. But if you come from a JRPG base. a large part of 14’s story is par or lower.

I come from a JRPG base and I wouldn't be here if I hadn't first enjoyed the game from a JRPG perspective. I'd mostly dropped out of playing the genre in favour of shorter-form narrative games, but here I am back again.

It might be "par" for an RPG story but I think you are underestimating the amount of mediocre RPGs out there. I personally think it is on the good end of what I have played.

I actually have a fairly low hit rate on enjoying and persevering with FF games, but this one grabbed me.