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

[Seera1024]

Honestly... if you aren't interested in the story this game has nothing for you. Nothing that you are doing will make sense if you skip the story. The story is amazing after ARR.

I wouldn't go that far.

There are people out there who enjoy the content outside of the story enough to warrant buying subs and expansion packs. They aren't the majority, but they do exist.

[Kolsykol]

Not every game needs to be for everyone.

[AlyaNimfa]

I started not too long ago, got 80 well before even starting current expansion. Rerolled due to FC drama and not being able to find a FC that accepts people my age, re-leveling now.

I have to say, I absolutely LOVE the story, I LOVE leveling through it, and I am SO pleased I never paid for a skip. Even the second time around!

Maybe the people who are complaining are used to playing games with zero story content? For example I tried another popular MMO before coming here, lasted like three months, their story was a shambles and made no sense and had no player engagement.

[ZedxKayn]

Honestly... if you aren't interested in the story this game has nothing for you. Nothing that you are doing will make sense if you skip the story. The story is amazing after ARR.

I don't need to understand why I'm fighting Perfect Alex to enjoy my job, the mechanics, and the banter that ensues with my friends, thank you very much.

Maybe the people who are complaining are used to playing games with zero story content? For example I tried another popular MMO before coming here, lasted like three months, their story was a shambles and made no sense and had no player engagement.

Personally, most of my favorite games have very good story telling and world building.
Walls of exposition and info dumps is exactly not that. The quality of the story and world matters little when the way it's presented is bad.

[kaynide]

How about instead of spending 200-300 hours doing the MSQ, that may be a slog for many players, especially those who are there to play endgame with friends, they (SE) make the new player experience better? By encouraging the usage of a skip, there isn't a huge incentive to "fix" any issues there may be with the new player experience. They have to play hundreds of hours of content they may not be interested in just to get to the part they actually wanted to play.

These people are not the intended audience SE is trying to entice to play. SE is happy to get any money, but their target player is the one spending that monthly subscription getting through the story.

Players only interested in “Endgame” content are trying to do an extremely small slice of content, or glamours/socialization/rp which doesn’t require level cap to begin with. This small tiny bit of content is easily burned through. Again, SE is happy to take their 1-2 month subscription, but they are hardly “bell cow” customers.

[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.

[Vyrerus]

Walls of exposition and info dumps is exactly not that. The quality of the story and world matters little when the way it's presented is bad.

Nah, a good story is a good story. If you can't get over reading a lot, then that's on you. The best stories in the world are still inside of books. There are certainly better ways to engage an audience with a story, but that doesn't really make the story better or worse.

[ZedxKayn]

Nah, a good story is a good story. If you can't get over reading a lot, then that's on you. The best stories in the world are still inside of books. There are certainly better ways to engage an audience with a story, but that doesn't really make the story better or worse.

I can get over reading a lot, I enjoy novels plenty. When it's well written. In XIV, it's all dialogue, usually more to say less, with awkward animations in-between occasionally, and info dumps that can definitely break the pacing. It isn't engaging.

[Rezef]

Use story skip, enjoy content, understand nothing (story related), skip all cutscenes, reach 80, do 80s content. That easy.

[LaylaTsarra]

You want to play with your friends and skip most of the game buy a skip pretty simple. Interestingly enough the wow streamers didn't skip but actually played though story. Fun to watch their game play and reactions.