Please let me skip MSQ

[Penthea]

I get home from work and not be stuck running from point A to B for days completely alone because I have to earn the ability to not be alone in a multi-player game.

You must be playing VERY little because you unlock group content in the game very quickly. Additionally with lvl sync any player can do group content with you provided they have it unlocked. If your friends are refusing to do that content with you that's on them, not the game. The game provides the tools for them to play with you. The game does not prevent your friends from playing with you.

You came to a story driven game so...you have to play through the story. You can buy a skip but it only works up to the beginning of the current expansion so whether you buy a skip or not you have story to do. You just get to choose whether to do more or less story.

All mainline series FF games are story driven and FFXIV is part of the mainline series. You can't entirely skip the story content in any of them.

I have cried over this.

This has genuinely made me doubt the seriousness of your post. Being annoyed? Yea I can believe that.

Unless your friends refusing to play with you made you cry. That I could believe. But crying over needing to play through a story...nope.

[Skiros]

If you're skipping all cutscenes, the actual running from point A to point B isn't very much. The dungeons/trials are another thing, but your friends can join you for those. EW is VERY cutscene-heavy.

Solo duties can sometimes be a pain, but there's thankfully not that many of them.

SE has never offered a content skip for current MSQ content, the chances of them doing so will be very very small.

It takes like 10-15 hours to complete the MSQ + complete aether currents.

It's a significant time-sink still if you don't have too much time to play.

[BluexBird]

Skip cutscenes. You'll be done in 2 days tops.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

I really don't think leveling instances where you can fail every single mechanic, switch to "very easy" and proceed to clear with no sweat (and even stay dead for the entire encounter while the other three players clear it if we are talking about a dungeon) are such a worthwhile learning experience to attach twenty hours of fetch quests with cutscenes to them and make the whole thing mandatory. And honestly, just giving people a "hand out" with all those indicators you can access from help menu would probably be way more convenient and useful.

And there are definitely things beyond dungeons and raids you can do after MSQ. You have entire DoL/DoH gated by it and even something like farming FATEs with friends is more of a social interaction than doing MSQ together.

So the fact that the only things MSQ in EW locks out are the Expert Roulette (2 90 dungeons), and the new raid which literally just dropped, is somehow so detrimental that all the other content in the game doesn't matter?

OP can easily play with their maxxed end game friends in:

50/60/70/80 Roulette
Leveling Roulette
Trials Roulette
Main Story Scenario Roulette
Alliance Raids Roulette
Normal Raids Roulette

Not to mention they, as a group, can go around doing Fate farming. The maxxed leveled friends will be getting Aphorisms for queueing for the roulettes at max level, and I haven't met anyone yet who has leveled every single job and has the entire set of 570 Tomestone gear for *everything* so far, so...

To touch upon the "teaching aspects of the game during the level up process"... That's literally what a good video game does. It is not the game's fault that a player refuses to read tooltips, learn mechanics, etc. The same player who just outright refuses to learn, is going to be bad regardless of skipping or not, if a current-content story skip was on the table. So I'll agree with you on that aspect. However, I feel those types of players are a minority. A good chunk of people that I've met and played with during my course of playtime have learned by doing in this game, and seeing mechanics introduced over the course of the leveling experience tends to help them out a lot when they get to the "endgame".

[Azuri]

Because it's about game design. You have to look at the game you've chosen to play. For example, when I played WoW or some FPS game or looter shooter, I'm not playing for the story. I'm playing to kill stuff and get loot. And that's pretty much it. When I played Overwatch I didn't care about the story at all. I know one was there, but the story of Overwatch wasn't why I played it. I played to PvP.

In FFXIV or LOTRO or SWTOR, story is what matters most. So when I want to get immersed in the story, those are the games I play. Endgame and loot is not the reason I play FFXIV. I play for the lore and the characters.

If all you really care about is dungeons and the like and aren't really into story, then FFXIV may legitimately not be the game for you.

And is this really neccessary to gate the game and force everyone to focus on whatever you subjectively prefer? What is the harm in accommodating varied types of players? You don't make arguably the most successful MMO on the market by saying "players who enjoy X are not allowed". OP isn't asking to remove the story and lore. Or even make more content that's not MSQ. They just want a way to skip it. In the same way you are free to skip gear grind and difficult content like extreme/savage/ultimate.

And your argument about other games is not great. I've enjoyed playing Destiny for it's lore. Does that mean that this game wasn't for me? So many people buy the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield just to play the campaign and never touch multiplayer. They often have great fun with it... or are they also playing the wrong game? Big part of Overwatch's success is commonly attributed to it's appeal to wider audience through out of game media. You don't have to be a sweaty FPS player to enjoy Overwatch.

This tribalism and gatekeeping helps no one. OP could have been another paying customer who supports the game and gives SE a reason to keep it going and expanding. But they were basically told to screw off because they do not enjoy the story enough. A bit sad, don't you think?

[Lexis]

I will ask a genuine question for everyone who insists that "Story is the main focus and you are obliged to do it". What is the point? Is that some kind of "eat your vegetables before dessert" approach? No matter if you consider those "vegetables" the most delicious gourmet cuisine ever made, why force them on someone who has no interest in the story? Will the game benefit or you feel happier if someone like the OP spends several evenings just going between NPCs and pressing ESC twice to skip the cutscenes before they can do something they are interested in? Because let's be honest, MSQ is nothing but a series of cutscenes (with less than half of them voiced) intermingled with A to B fetch tasks.

And no, MSQ really isn't a social activity you can do with friends. Not if you don't care about the story. They can help you unsync an occasional mandatory dungeon but in the end this is likely not what you or them want to do. If someone just wants to do the latest dungeon/raid/whatever, is offering them a skip that includes the latest expansion on the mogstation really such a problem?

It's not skipping the MSQ that is the problem so much as people picking the one Story-focused MMO to play and then complaining that they have to play through said story. There are MMOs better suited for the 'skip to end-game' style of gameplay. If you prefer FFXIV over those, for whatever reason that may be, and choose to stay here, more power to you, but don't come on here and cry about having to play one expansion worth of story in a STORY DRIVEN MMO. I've spent enough time on WoW to know what happens when the developers start catering to the end-game players above all else so yes, it does affect us if skipping the story becomes the norm.

I wIlL nEvEr SeRvE

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

It takes like 10-15 hours to complete the MSQ + complete aether currents.

It's a significant time-sink still if you don't have too much time to play.

10-15 hours is not a lot of content. That's what, a week tops if 2 hours of playtime is done a day? Barely?

That is not exactly a significant time sink.

[Azuri]

So the fact that the only things MSQ in EW locks out are the Expert Roulette (2 90 dungeons), and the new raid which literally just dropped, is somehow so detrimental that all the other content in the game doesn't matter?

OP can easily play with their maxxed end game friends in:

50/60/70/80 Roulette
Leveling Roulette
Trials Roulette
Main Story Scenario Roulette
Alliance Raids Roulette
Normal Raids Roulette

Not to mention they, as a group, can go around doing Fate farming. The maxxed leveled friends will be getting Aphorisms for queueing for the roulettes at max level, and I haven't met anyone yet who has leveled every single job and has the entire set of 570 Tomestone gear for *everything* so far, so...

To touch upon the "teaching aspects of the game during the level up process"... That's literally what a good video game does. It is not the game's fault that a player refuses to read tooltips, learn mechanics, etc. The same player who just outright refuses to learn, is going to be bad regardless of skipping or not, if a current-content story skip was on the table. So I'll agree with you on that aspect. However, I feel those types of players are a minority. A good chunk of people that I've met and played with during my course of playtime have learned by doing in this game, and seeing mechanics introduced over the course of the leveling experience tends to help them out a lot when they get to the "endgame".

You've conveniently ignored two of the most relevant endgame instances the game currently offers - the two extreme fights. In two weeks, entire tier of savage raids will be added to them. If this is the kind of content their friends are focused on, OP is quite literally gated from playing with them.

[Lium]

And is this really neccessary to gate the game and force everyone to focus on whatever you subjectively prefer? What is the harm in accommodating varied types of players? You don't make arguably the most successful MMO on the market by saying "players who enjoy X are not allowed". OP isn't asking to remove the story and lore. Or even make more content that's not MSQ. They just want a way to skip it. In the same way you are free to skip gear grind and difficult content like extreme/savage/ultimate.

And your argument about other games is not great. I've enjoyed playing Destiny for it's lore. Does that mean that this game wasn't for me? So many people buy the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield just to play the campaign and never touch multiplayer. They often have great fun with it... or are they also playing the wrong game? Big part of Overwatch's success is commonly attributed to it's appeal to wider audience through out of game media. You don't have to be a sweaty FPS player to enjoy Overwatch.

This tribalism and gatekeeping helps no one. OP could have been another paying customer who supports the game and gives SE a reason to keep it going and expanding. But they were basically told to screw off because they do not enjoy the story enough. A bit sad, don't you think?

You missed my point completely. I'm not saying this game excludes anyone. I'm saying every game has a target audience. The target audience of FFXIV are generally people who like story. As is evidenced by other posts in this thread and really around the internet. I haven't played other FF games but it's clear that every game in the main series focuses on story.

That doesn't mean everyone that plays this game likes the story. It means that's the way the game was designed. The same can be said for those other games I mentioned. Yes, they have stories and some probably enjoy it. But that doesn't mean people who mostly played for the story are the target audience.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

You've conveniently ignored two of the most relevant endgame instances the game currently offers - the two extreme fights. In two weeks, entire tier of savage raids will be added to them. If this is the kind of content their friends are focused on, OP is quite literally gated from playing with them.

And you're missing the point that, if they play 2 hours a day and skip the 'story' content, they can be at that 'endgame'. 1 hour a day and it's 2 weeks. Still make it in time for that savage. Also will show them the normal mode of those two EX fights so they aren't completely blind going into them.