Please let me skip MSQ

[SilverObi]

Why aren't your friends doing other content with you? Current dungeons/endgame is not the end-all be-all of this game and never will be, in case you're misunderstanding the design.

Get your friends do run lower dungeons with you for leveling, old raids for glamour and mounts, or overworld stuff like maps or Hunts.

Why aren't your FRIENDS. playing with you? Do they also only do what is "current" to the complete abandonment of anything not at level cap? Or is it just you that thinks that this is the only thing you can do with your friends?

[Penthea]

Why aren't your friends doing other content with you?

That's the real question. Level sync makes it easy to bring people together.

[Arazehl]

What this seems to be to me is jealousy over his friends being more advanced in the new expansion and since he said he skipped everything prior to EW, feels that they should do the same with EW too. There was no mention if these friends hated their own progression through msq.

I imagine he saw them all enjoying it for the most part and feels left out. I mean sure he doesn't enjoy the story, but I think it has more to do with the feeling of being left behind, because his friends had more time to advance and progress to reach the end of the current content. This feeling can ruin a good thing if you let it. If your friends are what you claim as "friends" they will support and cheer you onward through the msq.

[Makeda]

Most people who buy skips unsub not too long after...

There really isn't much to sustain you here if you've not grown attached to the lore, story, and world.

I see a lot of talk in here about how a booster would be unprepared for endgame content.

You won't convince them of that. But it's true. This isn't WoW. We've got videos of some top end WoW raiders now, who bought boosts, and even with carries essentially spend most of their fights as "floor tank" - the dead guy makes sure the floor doesn't attack anybody by... holding it down I guess.

Before the mass WoW-exodus when people were quitting that because of all it's currently insanity, we also had videos of "raid pros" from WoW who got those boosts, failed at everything, and then quit FFXIV calling it a "dumb game with a story that sucks" (A story they bought a skip past... so actually didn't even know...).

But WoW players tend to think every MMO will follow the same formula, and you can't convince them they're wrong - they need to find out for themselves. If you're lucky, they will find out by actually playing the game. If you're not lucky, they will pay to skip past FFXIV and be at the "stuff that's just filler content here"...

As I said in my earlier post... why would you buy tickets to a movie and then sit in the lobby refusing to watch it until the end credits were rolling?

[YukikoKurosawa]

That's the real question. Level sync makes it easy to bring people together.

I don't think a significiant number of players are even aware of this. I don't know if this is just a failure on the devs part, but a lot of players will go through the whole game never realizing that Golden Saucer exists, for example. All the unlockable content is relegated to blue quests that aren't immediately obvious as to what it is they even unlock. You'll find one that'll unlock an extreme trial. Another that unlocks Hildibrand. As silly as it is that people skip everything and go straight to the "endgame", it's not like the game does a very good job explaining the existence of the other content it has to offer. I've seen so many streamers skip through the MSQ saying they gotta "catch up" with everyone else, never setting foot in Golden Saucer. Never touching unlockable side dungeons. Never touching Alliance or Normal raids. Never touching Extremes of older content. They don't just avoid older content, they don't seem to even realize it EXISTS unless their followers tell them.

I think the game needs to do a better job making people aware of what it has to offer so less people end up treating it like just any other MMO where all you do is raidlog the latest content.

[RobynDaBank]

I really don't see how someone completing MSQ will help with it. It is quite literally designed to be as accessible as possible. Someone having "Endwalker" under completed quests doesn't have any correlation with their competence in the game.

It's also worth noting that I'm talking exclusively about MSQ skip. It's an entirely separate item from level skip. I wouldn't advocate for instant-90 item. But the quests themselves? I really don't see the harm.

A friend I have who is hardcore into any game he picks up, plays competitively and also has experienced several MMOs confided to me that after he boosted to 80 he died a crap ton to mechanics as he hadn't seen them or misunderstood different markers. He even unabashedly said he was doing roulettes, AND was the healer. I get it, hard to admit with how easy the MSQ is that the normal dungeons teach anything of value. But imagine if you were whisked into a big boss fight while not knowing:

1. What stack markers look like

2. What these weird arrows rotating around a boss before some mechanic mean

3. What that big red eye on the boss means before a cast

4. The fact that you're standing close to the front of a boss (even by accident or just thinking nothing is wrong) and then you're at 2% health

5. What order to press your buttons in. Not talking optimal complex openers, really just cursorily reading tooltips and not knowing what a "buff window" or "combos" are.

[Makeda]

I don't think a significiant number of players are even aware of this. I don't know if this is just a failure on the devs part, but a lot of players will go through the whole game never realizing that Golden Saucer exists, for example. All the unlockable content is relegated to blue quests that aren't immediately obvious as to what it is they even unlock. You'll find one that'll unlock an extreme trial. Another that unlocks Hildibrand. As silly as it is that people skip everything and go straight to the "endgame",

Agreed.

I've got people who I've finally turned into absolute FFXIV fans fully in love with the game, the story, the lore, and the characters who I still cannot convince to click on a quest marked with a + sign...

But I don't blame SE for this.

Really WoW is the ONLY MMO where you want to get to 'Endgame' as your top priority. It's even one of only a few were this is a major priority at all.

All of the others are in some way about the journey and the side content and a host of other things. So do we change every single MMO out there to make the landing softer for WoW players, or just accept that unless they get over the presumption that every game copied WoW; they will keep having rough landings elsewhere?

It can be said though, that of all the MMOs out there, FFXIV "looks the most like WoW" on the surface... vertical progression gearing in a level based system with trinity based tab target combat into queueable dungeons and raids. So people come here thinking that means it's actually similar beyond that surface level.

[Yeol]

Please just let me play with my friends.

You don't have to skip MSQ to be able to play with your friends. Your friends can help you in duty (dungeons, trials, raids, etc..).

[Penthea]

I don't think a significiant number of players are even aware of this. I don't know if this is just a failure on the devs part, but a lot of players will go through the whole game never realizing that Golden Saucer exists, for example. All the unlockable content is relegated to blue quests that aren't immediately obvious as to what it is they even unlock. You'll find one that'll unlock an extreme trial. Another that unlocks Hildibrand. As silly as it is that people skip everything and go straight to the "endgame", it's not like the game does a very good job explaining the existence of the other content it has to offer. I've seen so many streamers skip through the MSQ saying they gotta "catch up" with everyone else. They don't just avoid older content, they don't seem to even realize it EXISTS unless their followers tell them.

I came to this game after a decade of WoW and had no help from anyone with FFXIV because I didn't join a fc until I hit max lvl, which meant I had no contact with veteran players. I figured out lvl sync from looking at my party ui and noticing skills were unusable. Back when I started blue quests weren't a thing. Quests that unlocked content had an identical symbol to generic side quests. I found content just by doing the quests that I found.

Even though I had a hardcore raiding background I didn't disregard the whole game and acted as if raiding would be the only content worth doing. The difference between me and some ex-WoW players is I didn't come to this game expecting it to be like WoW...because it's a game made by an entirely different studio from a different country and it has a completely different name. Why would I go to something called Final Fantasy and expect to find WoW?

I understand that players can get unknowingly trained to expect all games in one genre to be just like the one they're familiar with, but at the same time I don't understand the logic behind repeatedly smashing your head against a wall from trying to play a different game as if it's something else, be somehow surprised to find that it doesn't work and then get angry about it. Many things about FFXIV surprised me but instead of getting annoyed that it wasn't what I was used to I instead tried to interact with the game as it was.

And that's the problem with some players. They don't try to take the game as it is. They get annoyed that it's not like the other game they used to play. I'm not saying they have to like everything, but coming to the forums to demand that a core element of the game be changed or be entirely skippable either means the game is not for you, or you just didn't give that core element a chance.

I know some people who have little to no interest in the story. But they have accepted that they're in a story driven game. They just skip the cutscenes and don't read any of the text without any complaining. I don't see why OP can't do this. Especially considering that I know someone who completed the EW msq in three days on their alt despite having to endure long queues due to their work schedule.

Sorry but I can't really sympathise with OP when it comes to how they approach the game. They can buy a skip and it takes only a handful of days to finish the EW msq if you skip cutscenes. That's about as long as it takes to get to max lvl in WoW from the previous expansion lvl. The time spent is not hugely different. If their friends are refusing to play with them unless they're max lvl then that really sucks, but that's the OP's friends being crappy creating a problem. Not the game.

EDIT: I am unsure if OP came from WoW but I compared FFXIV to WoW because that game allows the rushing attitude that OP wants. And like I already said EW msq takes about as long to do as lvling up in a new expansion in WoW if you skip the cutscenes and don't read the text.

[van_arn]

Most people who buy skips unsub not too long after...

There really isn't much to sustain you here if you've not grown attached to the lore, story, and world.

I see a lot of talk in here about how a booster would be unprepared for endgame content.

You won't convince them of that. But it's true. This isn't WoW. We've got videos of some top end WoW raiders now, who bought boosts, and even with carries essentially spend most of their fights as "floor tank" - the dead guy makes sure the floor doesn't attack anybody by... holding it down I guess.

Before the mass WoW-exodus when people were quitting that because of all it's currently insanity, we also had videos of "raid pros" from WoW who got those boosts, failed at everything, and then quit FFXIV calling it a "dumb game with a story that sucks" (A story they bought a skip past... so actually didn't even know...).

But WoW players tend to think every MMO will follow the same formula, and you can't convince them they're wrong - they need to find out for themselves. If you're lucky, they will find out by actually playing the game. If you're not lucky, they will pay to skip past FFXIV and be at the "stuff that's just filler content here"...

As I said in my earlier post... why would you buy tickets to a movie and then sit in the lobby refusing to watch it until the end credits were rolling?

You won't be prepared for endgame content by doing the MSQ either.

If you don't have the time to at least cutscene skip the current expansion MSQ, though, you likely don't have the time to do endgame either.

Some people just want to smack the hard stuff. That's perfectly fine-- it's their choice. I'd rather people skip to the end, raid to their heart's content (once they learn how to endgame), then potentially double back to experience the story and other content than not play at all.

I do not think skipping to the end of the current expansion makes sense at all, though. It's very much a "at least try the story" thing for me, but I'm not going to show anyone the door if they try it and don't like it.