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

[Halivel]

SE provides the "opportunity"? I do not think it's an "opportunity" to pay SE a decent portion of money just to skip past hundreds of hours of story, just to play the mmo aspect with friends. Them not providing other alternatives, other than a skip/boost, and with expansion after expansion making the trip to endgame longer and longer, is just one means of getting more money from players, in my opinion.

Skip books ARE an opportunity. They are, essentially, a time travel of sorts. Depending on your pace you would arguably spend more than 50$ just on a sub by the time you reach 5.0. Skip options save your time by taking money you would spend on a sub otherwise.

It would be simply weird to give people free ride to end game while taking money for a sub from those who decide to go through the story manually, playing the game the way it was intended to be played. You want to skip the game in order to save time? Pay for it then, since there's no other option. Either this or spend a week or two skipping through cutcsenes, which is also an option if you're that unwilling of both experiencing the story and buying skip books.

[Iscah]

Skip books ARE an opportunity. They are, essentially, a time travel of sorts. Depending on your pace you would arguably spend more than 50$ just on a sub by the time you reach 5.0. Skip options save your time by taking money you would spend on a sub otherwise.

This. You can also just buy the story skip and then level a character manually fairly quickly by running duties. You could even make it a group activity with your friends.

I think I got a character from 50 to 70 in a week just doing daily roulettes. You need to get up to 50 first of course, but you could get through it all faster if you were focusing on doing it.

A story skip unlocks all optional dungeons and the Crystal Tower raids so you can dive into several types of roulette and get the EXP and poetics you need as you go. You'd just need to do the job quests for your skills, which can usually be rushed through while you're queuing for other things.

[Seraphor]

I would ask where in the story they're 'washing out' at.
If its before the end of ARR, then I'd argue that this isn't the game for them.
While endgame is a large focus, it's not the main one. Each expansion comes with a ton of story content and that's the main content of the game. If they can't make it through one expansion now, how are they going to get through Endwalker when that releases?

[Herebedragons]

This is why I’m hoping the new arc after endwalker just starts the player at the new arc. New game + can get people that want the story of the previous arc, and everyone can play together again rather than be scattered throughout a 300+ hour msq.

Or you know, maybe at least the option to choose? It's not like the rest of the game will die when 6.1 rolls out.

[HollowedDoll]

Complaining about having to do the story in a story focused game, never change.

[SpanishInkwehsitor]

Skip books ARE an opportunity. They are, essentially, a time travel of sorts. Depending on your pace you would arguably spend more than 50$ just on a sub by the time you reach 5.0. Skip options save your time by taking money you would spend on a sub otherwise.

It would be simply weird to give people free ride to end game while taking money for a sub from those who decide to go through the story manually, playing the game the way it was intended to be played. You want to skip the game in order to save time? Pay for it then, since there's no other option. Either this or spend a week or two skipping through cutcsenes, which is also an option if you're that unwilling of both experiencing the story and buying skip books.

This sounds very much like “put in the hard work if you wanna have fun”, to which I say both the work isn’t exactly hard, it’s just tedious. Secondly there shouldn’t BE any work, it’s a GAME. One, I might add, we paid for, plus pay an extra $12 a month for. So yeah, asking $50 to skip the forced reading segment is unreasonable.

I found the game a LOT more interesting AFTER the MSQ because I actually had time to go back to all the optional content since my time wasn’t occupied by riding the railroad Square handed us. Despite what you may think the destination IS as important as the journey, more so when 3/4 of the journey sucked.

[Herebedragons]

This sounds very much like “put in the hard work if you wanna have fun”, to which I say both the work isn’t exactly hard, it’s just tedious. Secondly there shouldn’t BE any work, it’s a GAME. One, I might add, we paid for, plus pay an extra $12 a month for. So yeah, asking $50 to skip the forced reading segment is unreasonable.

I found the game a LOT more interesting AFTER the MSQ because I actually had time to go back to all the optional content since my time wasn’t occupied by riding the railroad Square handed us. Despite what you may think the destination IS as important as the journey, more so when 3/4 of the journey sucked.

Reading is sooooo much work, NO READING IN MY GAMES!

3/4? You know what they say about opinions, right?

[Jojoya]

Probably triggered people with the title, but the struggle is super real to slog through the literally 200-400 hours of story content to get to max level

For those curious or skeptical about the number, I just leveled a new character up through the end of 5.0 MSQ. I watched all cutscenes in their entirety with auto-advance set to 6 and read all dialog. I did only MSQ, job quests and side quests for Aether Currents, plus some extra content to get through the 46-49 hump (did not have any XP bonuses active other than rested until I finished 2.0). It took 189 hours. Doing additional side content such as FATEs or roulettes along the way would have added to the time.

So while 400 hours would be a gross exaggeration of the time needed to complete MSQ, 200 hours is accurate enough for those who are watching cutscenes. Those who skip cutscenes or go through them at faster speeds will shave several dozen hours off that time.

That said, there's nothing to stop anyone from playing with their friends new to the game. Simply join them as they work their way through the MSQ. Once they've completed their starting area, turn on NG+ so you can be playing through the story with them. It is supposed to be about playing with your friends and helping them enjoy their experience instead of rushing them to end game because that's more convenient for you, right?

[Shougun]

I would add a bit to your time for first go players - like 50 at least, when I redid Witcher I was much faster than the first time (like 40% even though I did more content the second time).

Though I agree 400 is more on the high end. 200 being quite quick and 400 being quite slow (or doing some other optional content).

[Divinemights]

Probably triggered people with the title, but the struggle is super real to slog through the literally 200-400 hours of story content to get to max level if you aren't unemployed or a streamer. As a fairly long time player who has had a bunch of friends hop over from other games recently, I've noticed that most of them are washing out and quitting before getting to 80 to join me and my other established friends.
Just a bummer to entice my friends over with hopes to raid and do other activities with each other, and have to wait weeks or months for them to slog through the story, if they make it at all.

Conclusion is this game is not for your friends and never will be even they got a skip.
The game is show cased as story driven and theme park MMORPG and if your friends are unable to get hook on it and they never will.
They are probably the type of people that skip on every thing and I really found it is no point for them to waste their time here.
They are probably better with those Korean MMO that designed with 2 years life span