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

[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?

[Halivel]

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.

It is reasonable, and I think I explained well enough why. Is it a perfect solution? Probably not. But it is reasonable. Just because it's a game doesn't mean you should have everything on a plate right away. Do you start playing single player games right from the battle with last boss? Because lest you forget, FF14 is a full-scale FF title, it's supposed to be treated primarily as a story game despite having plenty of content outside of it. In FF14 going through story is a part of the fun. The entire game is centered around it - even unlocking end-game content is a story in itself.

If for you or your friends 3/4 of the main part of the game sucks - then I'm personally not sure why you're still here. You will face another major story-wall just in 3 months. Then another one. And another one. And another one. That's just how this game is, it's a part of its design. It's not a mistake, not a bug, it was deliberately designed this way. Destination matters, yes, but if you don't even like the process - what's the point? You will face this frustration every single expansion, if not every single major patch. Why put yourself into this position when you're clearly not the part of target audience for the game and there are projects that would suit your vision on games far better?

I say all this as somebody who didn't skip a single dialogue or cut-scene in all 7.5 years of playing the game and loved every second of this journey. I also know people who don't particularly care for the story and enjoy the game in their own way, but for none of them "3/4 of the journey" sucked, and as for those for whom it did... they actually left because it wasn't their cup of a tea. If you go as far as to say that major part of the game sucks for you - it's clearly just not your type of the game, which is okay.

[Kuroka]

I say all this as somebody who didn't skip a single dialogue or cut-scene in all 7.5 years of playing the game and loved every second of this journey. I also know people who don't particularly care for the story and enjoy the game in their own way, but for none of them "3/4 of the journey" sucked, and as for those for whom it did... they actually left because it wasn't their cup of a tea. If you go as far as to say that major part of the game sucks for you - it's clearly just not your type of the game, which is okay.

Well said, ive always hated these "i hate the story and just skip every cutscene ever" and "oh i hate the games music so i always turn it off" and ofc the "i hate how the game looks so i mod it till its a whole other game" ppl...

If you dont like this game at all and only like, 5% of it - deal with that and leave or accept it as it is.

Im not gettin FIFA because i like grass but want the whole soccer stuff removed and more focus on grass keeping lol

[LianaThorne]

Well said, ive always hated these "i hate the story and just skip every cutscene ever" and "oh i hate the games music so i always turn it off" and ofc the "i hate how the game looks so i mod it till its a whole other game" ppl...

If you dont like this game at all and only like, 5% of it - deal with that and leave or accept it as it is.

Im not gettin FIFA because i like grass but want the whole soccer stuff removed and more focus on grass keeping lol

Same logic could be applied to people's opinions on this topic:

If you don't like that someone enjoys the game differently than you do, deal with that and leave or accept it as it is.

Personally the latter seems the better option instead of seething that someone skips cutscenes, mods the game, etc. or seething that someone treats the MSQ like it's the greatest story ever written in the history of storytelling.

Just let people play how they want to lol, jeez. Unless it somehow prevents you from playing the game, it shouldn't matter what some random on the internet does with their sub. If someone's opinion does affect you to the point you want to quit the game, and I mean this with peace and love, you should probably consider becoming more secure in your hobbies and opinions so that others don't affect yours. Doesn't make much sense to me to let someone who is irrelevant to your life decide whether or not the way you play a game (within reason of course) is good or bad. It just really shouldn't matter lol.