The story is great, but it blatantly gets in the way of the rest of the game

[Lecru]

"Hello i'm new! I can't be bothered with actually questing or enjoying my time doing the 'On Content' quests, that when relevant was drip fed content to the masses. But I don't like this. So i'm gonna say how bad it is because I wasn't here for the content"

This about sum up what I just read?

[LaylaTsarra]

I enjoy the story, but I also enjoy leveling up and exploring other aspects of the game. I want to get to the content my friends are playing. Suddenly the story goes from being something I was enjoying at my own pace to something that is blatantly getting in the way of me accessing the other content. It takes a lot of the fun out of of the story when you feel pressured to just grind through it to be allowed to access the rest of the game.

What is this content your friends are doing?

[Lecru]

What is this content your friends are doing?

He sounds like he's basically trying to speed run and not enjoy it simply because his friends have been playing longer and are at 90. More or less.

[MiaShino]

EDIT: There's also this bizarre idea people have that they need to rush to end game, which... again, the story is the game. Why would you cut out a huge chunck of it to experience a (comparatively) minor part of it? Doesn't make sense to me. This just isn't that sort of game.

Metal Gear is pretty darn story heavy. I doubt you will encounter many who would say they played only for the story and not the action stealth elements. Unlike books a video game is interactive entertainment so requiring player input. When I stop to read a book the book does not arbitrarily force me to stop reading - go to spot - talk to five people - fight one enemy. When you start wasting player time like this you had best be delivering on the story part.

Cannot imagine MGS would be nearly as popular if prevented you from doing the sneaky beaky bits until you finished reading two hours of dialogue. Sure sure characters can talk a lot in those games but the moment to moment is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. It has pacing. Ten minutes of cutscene? Alright! Now go sneak around Shadow Moses for an hour and have a blast!

Now if you are like my friends and happen to be excited to see what the next fight/dungeon has to offer mechanically, try new class ability, etc that the story has been hyping only to be sidelined by hour of derping about Little Ala Mhigo you may not be happy. You miiiight feel that this plot thread could have waited or been moved, that the moment is incorrect. We go fight dragon now, yes? Please? No? No.. Back to Gridania again.. Something about Imperial spies, I suppose. Darn I was really excited to see the Ishgard plot move forward and fight the big dragon.

A story should be narratively consistent especially when you tack a game onto it. It must focus on main plot threads or risk overwhelming the player with side plot tangents that resolve so late you forgot what you were even doing. ARR and post ARR are chock fricken full of narrative dissonance and it has nothing to do with poisoning the well. Some people just do not jive with tell tell tell tell story telling and find it boring. Lying to them does not help. Deluding new players into thinking it is not a slog will not make them suddenly enjoy it. They may even resent you for lying in first place.

Had multiple near "I quit" moments during ARR and post ARR. Many thanks that the hype around Heavensward proved true because am happy I stuck with the game. Yes I did resent those who I felt tricked me into thinking it was "the best story since sliced bread" because it really was not. Now I warn others that the early game is a fricken slog. Watched many friends nearly quit because it is a slog. It had nothing to do with my saying so, they were not having fun.

Good thing there is fun game underneath! Nothing like wishing to take White Mage into Stone Vigil because it is getting close to fifty but you must now stop to listen to the Padjals blather endlessly about the elementals again.. then go collect your outdated gear because it is locking your aoe. Friends reeeeeaaaallly enjoy doing that.. not.

[Hyrist]

"FFXIV is not meant to be played like Wow. I should stop playing FFXIV like WoW"

Write this on a chalk board/white board 50 times. Take a breath, resume the game and play it properly. If you're complaining about the story in a story-centric game, it's not the game's fault. It's like complaining about the square shaped spaces on a chess board, or the fact the pawns only move forward. "It'd be so much more fun if every piece moved like the queen!"

This game is a single player JRPG in the skin of an MMO. There is absolutely no reason to rush towards 'endgame' content as anything that concerns ilvl is on an 8 (formerly 6) month deathclock with catch-up mechanics on ilvl abounds. Most content can be completed in casual gear provided to you by the story.

The primary motivation of the game is to enjoy it like a theme park, not grind at it like a sweatshop. If doing the story so much bothers you, stop and take a break, go visit the Golden Saucer, maybe play some minigames to take your mind off of things for a while, and re-approach the story later. You're even encouraged to put the game down for a bit and take a breather.

Endgame in FFXIV is just another part of the whole, and just as optional. Most players don't even touch it.

[MiaShino]

The primary motivation of the game is to enjoy it like a theme park, not grind at it like a sweatshop. If doing the story so much bothers you, stop and take a break, go visit the Golden Saucer, maybe play some minigames to take your mind off of things for a while, and re-approach the story later. You're even encouraged to put the game down for a bit and take a breather.

This is actually pretty darn good advice if there is honesty. Recommend grabbing some deeps jobs you may be interested in then progress while in the queue to help pass time. That has worked for the friends and extended family to make pacing feel better.

[Bergfinn]

So, I've been playing this game for the last two weeks about. I've owned it for longer than that, but never really got into it until some friends told me they were really enjoying it so I resubscribed and gave it another shot.

For the most part I've been having a lot of fun, but I have run into a problem that really annoys me: The way the main quest gates access to the expansions makes your progress grind to a complete halt in an obnoxious way at several points of the game.

For example, the ARR storyline has 80 (!!!) quests in a row at the end of it that are all level 50. I understand that this made sense when these quests were released episodically with game updates when the max level was 50, but from the perspective of a new player it's absolutely ridiculous.

It's because you didn't finished ARR yet. The MSQ is a continuous story and everything you're checking now in the past 2.0 ending isn't only building up to the next xpac and beyond but also giving a lot of world building in general. And it'll start to pay off for you really soon. This is a common mistake people make bc they really think they finished the ARR story bc the ending after the events in Praetorium. That is just the 2.0 ending.

All that said, yeah the 80 post 2.0 quests are overwhelming, I feel your pain it wasn't a easy journey for me too till certain stuff started to happening. But believe me, this is the only time the patch quests will feel like a chore, the "post x.0" quests from HW and foward are way less in numbers and way more interesting to a point you crave for them.

[Chyro]

Damn, a new player shares their experience and opinion and this is the kind of responses they get? (not every single post, but should be obvious what I mean when reading some of the responses)

Great community btw.

The story can be a bit of a slog at times, but its quite rewarding if you manage to pull through it. Up to you if you wanna keep going or rather try another game, or just go to ff14 when you're in the mood for story. Hitting a cap level and reaching the end of that level's story (which is usually one of the earlier quests of that level, before all the added-on patch story of the same level continues) it also unlocks a lot of other content for that level. Like at lv50, getting many optional dungeons, the 8-man raid story, and the 24-man raids. There's plenty to 'explore' when you reach certain points. But you won't get around doing the main story to unlock all the other content, unless you buy a story boost (which you can do just to unlock stuff and then still play the story in new game+, though not sure how good a game experience that would be).

[Kemiko]

Metal Gear is pretty darn story heavy. I doubt you will encounter many who would say they played only for the story and not the action stealth elements. Unlike books a video game is interactive entertainment so requiring player input. When I stop to read a book the book does not arbitrarily force me to stop reading - go to spot - talk to five people - fight one enemy. When you start wasting player time like this you had best be delivering on the story part.

Cannot imagine MGS would be nearly as popular if prevented you from doing the sneaky beaky bits until you finished reading two hours of dialogue.

Just gonna say, yes, MGS does in fact do the thing you're saying it doesn't. In order to sneaky beaky bits in certain areas of the game or against certain opponents in the game you do, in fact, have to progress through its story to get there. The game has sneaking, for sure, and I can sneak certainly anywhere much in the same vein that XIV has combat and you can combat anywhere - but you want to do a specific thing that isn't available until later in the story and unfortunately, you're just now arriving in a game whose been developing a story for nearly a decade.

[Faafetai]

But believe me, this is the only time the patch quests will feel like a chore, the "post x.0" quests from HW and foward are way less in numbers and way more interesting to a point you crave for them.

I would completely agree if there were not a few bad eggs within the quests. There are only 3 times but dear lord those 3 times should not have happened that I was getting ARR flash backs. One dealing with poison, one dealing with doing emmanellain dirty work involving wolves, and putting on those dumb shepard slops again, because that was hillarious the first time. For some reason the story forgot estinien existed and we needed to wait until we could further the plot. Sometimes they wouldn't even acknowledge this was still a huge(dragon size even) issue it almost became a meme. I half expected for them to say 'estinien who' at some point. The rest was amazing but gosh those three things always stick out like a sore thumb for me.

I don't want to be a debbie downer about everything because the story is really good, but I swear there is one writer trying to fight the pen out of another writers hand and they have to lock one of them up for a time for the story to stay cohesive. There is a feeling of Ivalice a very very strong feeling of Ivalice and lady or lord of the fetch. Than there is the drk shadowbringer rogue story type of writing that is just beautiful. Though they always come back the other writer and he really like little ala mihgo, he likes it alot. Everyone likes it because he wrote it, the most important person in the world, him. He also really likes political medieval drama.