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

[kaynide]

OP, it's a fair point.

You play through the story and get a steady feel of progression in XP and new content unlocked, but then you are doing what is essentially filler quests at "cap". New content is unlocked, but most of it is just side stuff with no real bearing on the main story at hand, especially in ARR when you just want to get to Ishgard. I've played through ARR 3 times now, and yeah, the 2.x pre Ishgard bit just isn't fun.

I will say this: Once you get into Ishgard, the story, even the 3.x and 4.x end of expansion stuff feels MUCH better than ARR.

[Tychonius]

well it is.
If you can't be bothered to watch it in game. Skip it and youtube it.
Or unending journey it at your own time.

The point isn't that I can't be bothered to watch it, the point is if I play five days a week and I like to PvP on one of them, raid on the next, RP on the third, craft on the fourth and do story the fifth then all the other activities I enjoy are held up by the story, so I have to do story five days a week if I ever want no restrictions on the rest of the stuff. I don't want to pay 25 bucks to be allowed to to access expansion content I already paid for without hundreds of hours of frontloaded story and then replay it with NG+ either.

[Broken_Wind]

The point isn't that I can't be bothered to watch it, the point is if I play five days a week and I like to PvP on one of them, raid on the next, RP on the third, craft on the fourth and do story the fifth then all the other activities I enjoy are held up by the story, so I have to do story five days a week if I ever want no restrictions on the rest of the stuff. I don't want to pay 25 bucks to be allowed to to access expansion content I already paid for without hundreds of hours of frontloaded story and then replay it with NG+ either.

One thing that is unique with FFXIV is old raid content can be done 'synced' and provide a challenge. Not as difficult as it was back in the day, but still gives you a good raid experience

And with Party Finder its probably more feasible then you think. Especially if you already have a couple of friends.

This isnt for everyone granted, but it is an option once you get done with 2.0 which is probably about ~40 hours total if you read text and watch cutscenes, faster if you just skip skip skip

PvP is fully unlocked at lvl 30 as well, so thats already an option. And crafting is a long road too that has its own leveling system

To be clear, I'm not trying to invalidate your point but there is a middle ground that is perhaps better than you realize because FFXIV is different from other games

[ZedxKayn]

I do think that FFXIV's decision, while certainly was an "I quit" moment for people, has been overall extremely beneficial to the game. I think shorter leveling times and lack of world building are the biggest cause of how 99% of mmorpgs have sharp population drop offs within months of releasing the game. Rift is the poster child for this. Everyone loved it at launch, 1mn sold. people loved the class system. The events were fun. But there was no hook to that game world and you were max level in 2 weeks. 3 months later the game was down to 1/3 of its initial population and it never recovered

I'm gonna bring up ESO for that. Granted there's already pre-existing lore, it's a good entry to the TES universe so new players can get interested, and it manages to rejoice lorebeards like Skyrim and Oblivion could never without forcing hundreds of hours of story and cutscenes down people's throats. In a way, similarly to ESO being helped with "The Elder Scrolls" being in the name, I think "Final Fantasy" being in the game's title helped, a lot.
It's truly great and enjoyable because people are able to enjoy all of that story and lore at their own pace without being gated from partaking in every other content the game has to offer. And a think a story heavy game like XIV would've heavily benefited from such a system.

Without a doubt I'd have given XIV's story a chance if I wasn't forced to do it to do what is relevant to my interest, namely harder content.

[MagicalChase]

Frankly the story is hindered by the quests themselves. I love the plot and story of this game but holy hell does the thought of doing MSQ make my skin crawl. I was literally screaming during the second half of endwalker how bad it was with the pointless mindless chores. I was literally thinking "please god shake your head WoL I beg you to turn down this stupid pointless request."

[Jojoya]

The new player experience in this game is made genuinely worse by the fact that you have to go through this bizarre hazing ritual of reenacting nine years of live service with all the waits between expansions through the story missions before you're allowed to actually play the game in its present state.

That is your problem. You're approaching the game with the wrong attitude and expectations.

All that prior story is part of the game in its present state.

This isn't WoW, where the previous expansions don't matter to the latest iteration of the dev team. Here what came before matters to the present. You need to stop viewing it as a separate piece of content. The game is one long journey.

If that's not your style, that's fine. It's not going to appeal to everyone. But don't expect the game to change just because you want to skip to get to what you think will be the good parts.

By the way, where are your "friends" in all of this? You know they could be joining you as you play through the MSQ. That's possible here between New Game+ and level sync in instanced content, no need to create a new character to play through the same content that you are.

If they want you to be playing with them in side content, one would think they'd be helping to make the entire experience more enjoyable for you by keeping you company instead of abandoning you to do it alone. Are you certain they're really your friends?

[TaleraRistain]

Unfortunately OP, seeing the story as something to get out of the way seems to be the issue. This isn't a game where the design encourages that. The story is the game and the journey is part of the experience. They have given the nod to those who want to skip, but they're not going to make it easy because that would undermine the design and experience they built the game around.

[MagicalChase]

That is your problem. You're approaching the game with the wrong attitude and expectations.

All that prior story is part of the game in its present state.

This isn't WoW, where the previous expansions don't matter to the latest iteration of the dev team. Here what came before matters to the present. You need to stop viewing it as a separate piece of content. The game is one long journey.

If that's not your style, that's fine. It's not going to appeal to everyone. But don't expect the game to change just because you want to skip to get to what you think will be the good parts.

By the way, where are your "friends" in all of this? You know they could be joining you as you play through the MSQ. That's possible here between New Game+ and level sync in instanced content, no need to create a new character to play through the same content that you are.

If they want you to be playing with them in side content, one would think they'd be helping to make the entire experience more enjoyable for you by keeping you company instead of abandoning you to do it alone. Are you certain they're really your friends?

This basically, I mean do you play pokemon hurrying to get to the battle frontier or do you take your time getting to the gyms?

[IdowhatIwant]

Frankly the story is hindered by the quests themselves. I love the plot and story of this game but holy hell does the thought of doing MSQ make my skin crawl. I was literally screaming during the second half of endwalker how bad it was with the pointless mindless chores. I was literally thinking "please god shake your head WoL I beg you to turn down this stupid pointless request."

It doesn't help when the quests are mostly go talk to x, walk with y, follow z. EW was the first expansion as well where I skipped every cutscene in an entire zone, because how can prepping supplies for people to go to the moon be interesting. At least the other expansions had more frequent interesting duties involved in questing.

That is your problem. You're approaching the game with the wrong attitude and expectations.

All that prior story is part of the game in its present state.

This isn't WoW, where the previous expansions don't matter to the latest iteration of the dev team. Here what came before matters to the present. You need to stop viewing it as a separate piece of content. The game is one long journey.

If that's not your style, that's fine. It's not going to appeal to everyone. But don't expect the game to change just because you want to skip to get to what you think will be the good parts.

This being said though, it as unfriendly to new players for the opposite reason of WoW, where there is a lot of stuff that players have to do to reach the end game content to play with other players. I actually do expect the game to change because if it is not new player friendly, new players are not going to join. They need to have a second starting point after EW in all honesty, which is why they need to move away from the scions ASAP so that new starting point can begin.

[Amenara]

I think the biggest problem in the game right now is the 1-50 ARR experience is just not that much fun. Gameplay is bad (If you disagree, I challenge you to make a new char and play as rogue through the MSQ), the story is honestly a drag till after Titan and just when you think you are done, you get smacked with the 2.1-2.55 slog. There are legitimate complaints about the new player experience and honestly, SE needs to completely revamp the ARR experience.