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

[Mirhd]

So they went in with a reasonable expectation that it would be a similar to every other MMO out there experience? I think you might be missing the issue.

I don't necessarily think the story should be decoupled from everything but you sure as hell shouldn't have to slog through the 80 post ARR MSQ to unlock the first expansion and 3 jobs. SE needs to clean up the ARR questing experience more than removing 13% of the quests, it needs to be 30%+. There are a lot of drawn out plot points that can be simplified, there are a ton of quests that just don't need to exist anymore. I understand in the ARR times they needed to pad out the MSQ, especially in 2.1-2.3 since the things that happen can be condensed to a couple of quests, and nowadays it should be. In my opinion you should legitimately be able to watch the cutscenes and get from completion of 2.0 to start of HW in an afternoon.

I think the same can be said of every expansions x.1-x.5 patch cycle as well. It is an interesting story to tell, but at this point, it doesn't need to take months to complete.

I'm not missing the issue, though. It's hardly reasonable to expect something to be the same, every time, everywhere. Similar systems, leveling, etc? Sure, some things are just standard in the genre. Something that's advertised as being story heavy, though? Why would it be the same? I haven't played SWtOR since finishing TET, but you have to go through the entire story (starting with your class questline, which eventually moves into the expansions). Level skips are an option on their own store, but you can't just pick and choose the stories you want to do. Might have changed since I stopped playing, so if it has, fair enough.

Also, it most certainly does not take months to get to EW. Hyperbole much? I suppose it could if you play a few minutes a day, but that's a bit much to claim.

snip

You are not being made to "dance like a monkey" though...? What an odd thing to claim, and a very strange projection. To the bulk of this post though, I have to say this : if your parents and partner enjoyed it and had no real issues to speak of... it seems more like you are seeing something in the story/characters/systems that was never there to begin with. Your description of events and characters is rather... off. It's one thing not to like parts of a story/characters, that's perfectly fair, but it's another entirely to claim things that never happened. The one thing we agree on (and I have said this multiple times in the past in other threads) is the Titan questline in the level 30 range. That's just it, though; you're supposed to be fed up with these people. Hell, Y'stola wasn't happy with the Company of Heroes' nonsense and them wasting time while Titan could be potentially running amok, causing damage. Personally, I wanted to slap all of them.

Why am I not surprised the rabid "IT'S A STORE-REEEEEEEEE" hyper fans are in here being nasty? Lmao, ARR sucks and you all know it.

Excellent way of outing yourself as someone incapable of actually reading what someone posts. Doubly so to MiaShino claiming "cult" behavior to deflect criticism of their criticism. While I strongly disagree with Faafetais' claims, she/he is at least trying to engage in discussion. All you've proven is you aren't worth talking to.

[Amenara]

I'm not missing the issue, though. It's hardly reasonable to expect something to be the same, every time, everywhere. Similar systems, leveling, etc? Sure, some things are just standard in the genre. Something that's advertised as being story heavy, though? Why would it be the same? I haven't played SWtOR since finishing TET, but you have to go through the entire story (starting with your class questline, which eventually moves into the expansions). Level skips are an option on their own store, but you can't just pick and choose the stories you want to do. Might have changed since I stopped playing, so if it has, fair enough.

Also, it most certainly does not take months to get to EW. Hyperbole much? I suppose it could if you play a few minutes a day, but that's a bit much to claim.

I think the problem is that it is story focused to the detriment of gameplay. 300ish hours of just MSQ to get to the current content is beyond extreme. There is so much that can be pruned down or approached in a different way for the post patch content so that you can get the whole experience done in an afternoon or two of casual gameplay so you can unlock all the other content at that expansions level cap. I don't get why wanting to improve the game's leveling experience is so controversial. The story is good, but you can present it in a better way then it currently is (especially in ARR).

And it has been a minute since I have gone through the entirety of the MSQ on a new character, but with playing a couple hours a night, I'm still pretty sure it will take you a month or two (or longer) to reach the end of EW.

[MiaShino]

Something that's advertised as being story heavy, though? Why would it be the same? I haven't played SWtOR since finishing TET, but you have to go through the entire story (starting with your class questline, which eventually moves into the expansions). Level skips are an option on their own store, but you can't just pick and choose the stories you want to do. Might have changed since I stopped playing, so if it has, fair enough.

Swtor story is not mandatory at'all, nope. All one must do to access end game content is unlock their ship and make it to the fleet. Once there you can do the flashpoint stuffs or even endgame ops. Completed Gods of the Machine on Sithy alt after speedrunning to my ship. May take roughly thirty minutes for accomplishing this.

Also, it most certainly does not take months to get to EW. Hyperbole much? I suppose it could if you play a few minutes a day, but that's a bit much to claim.

Two or more weeks perhaps if are willing to "no-life it" as friends sometimes say. Highly not recommended if you are already experiencing the burnout as this is likely to make you quit.

The one thing we agree on (and I have said this multiple times in the past in other threads) is the Titan questline in the level 30 range. That's just it, though; you're supposed to be fed up with these people. Hell, Y'stola wasn't happy with the Company of Heroes' nonsense and them wasting time while Titan could be potentially running amok, causing damage. Personally, I wanted to slap all of them.

Thank the twelve yet again that they pruned that quest chain. First near I quit moment occurred right there. Much much better ways to evoke emotion in the player that doth not involve forcing them to actually live it. As uncle said when playing this; Who's on first is a funny joke. It would not be so funny to actually experience it.

Doubly so to MiaShino claiming "cult" behavior to deflect criticism of their criticism. While I strongly disagree with Faafetais' claims, she/he is at least trying to engage in discussion. All you've proven is you aren't worth talking to.

If you are going to shove words down my throat and misinterpret things I have said at the least take me out to dinner first. The least people could do is read my damn posts before hyper projecting into the sunset for the love of the twelve. I attempted engaging in cordial discussion until I hit my post limit but replies like this do little to make me wish to continue being cordial. Yall act culty sometimes. That is my opinion do with it what you will. Telling people to alter their mindset to enjoy something they clearly are not is.. creepy. Many apologies if that ruffles the jimmies? Amusing though how of alllll the things you could have replied to that I posted you chose that. Huh.

No one even replied to my last two posts. I cannot deflect what is never sent. Still waiting for someone to answer perhaps one of the questions I posited. Gods if I were paid in number of times someone assumed something about me on these forums I would also own one entire ward.

If anyone is willing to engage in something that is not intellectual equivalent of e-peen waving and does not reek of short guy syndrome then this Mia is willing. If not then this is where I respectfully disengage. Said most of what I wished too anyways and I agree with OP.

This is just my personal feelings. It is the reason being forced to do the titan grind a second time in ivalice and again to unlock the new game plus will never be done. I am not a monkey and I will not dance. Sorry. Some of it is not good.

Wait wait, wait one moment here. Are you telling me the series of fetch quests issued by the Wandering Derpathurge was not peak fricken story telling!

True highlights of Haukke grind where; Go to Meffrid > Now Aedoc > Now Charline > Now Meffrid > now Aedoc > now Meffrid > Now Charline > now Meffrid again > okay now go find guy who did not take medicine (that you were forced to gather the ingredients for). Wait what were we doing again? I thought we were hunting the masked man. Ohhh oh right this is setup for something that happens several story arcs later. Gotta say, peak fricken writing on this one.

Comes soooo late into the story that reveal about who you were delivering medicine too that you likely forgot amidst the myriad of sub plots.

Fricken Arcanist quest quite literally makes you dance in front of someone/chest four separate times. First bout of dancing occurs at Fools Falls.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Also, it most certainly does not take months to get to EW. Hyperbole much? I suppose it could if you play a few minutes a day, but that's a bit much to claim.

Two or more weeks perhaps if are willing to "no-life it" as friends sometimes say. Highly not recommended if you are already experiencing the burnout as this is likely to make you quit.

I made this character that you see as my new "lodestone main" around 2 or 3 weeks before Endwalker's original release date of Nov 23rd, did up to the Sastasha unlock quest and stopped and did other random stuff on my other alts until Endwalker released on December 7th, as I wanted to play the game from level 1 to max level as the reworked SMN because why not and also remake this character without having to spend 20 dollars on a fantasia and namechange.

I was planning on purchasing the expansion the 2nd week of January so I blazed through the MSQ as quickly as I could. I skipped every cutscene, every piece of dialogue, I sprinted everywhere, used mounts whenever available, had a friend of mine unsync every single MSQ dungeon and every single MSQ trial. I did around 30 to 60 quests per day, that's all I could stomach doing at any given day otherwise I'd have fallen gravely ill from all the MSQing and slumped over dead at my keyboard.

-With 164 quests in total, 2.0 took 5 or 7 days to get through. It would have been 2 or 3 days longer if the MSQ didn't throw so much exp at you that you become, on average, 5 levels higher than the MSQ.

-With 92 quests, which also includes the 4 mandatory primal quests and the 8 mandatory CT raid quests, 2.X took around 4 or 5 days to get through. Flight makes this part extremely quick to do. Without it it would have taken twice as long and would have caused me to question why I am doing this. Flight also makes doing the CT raid bearable. I did this without flight back when it was mandatory to do for 5.0 and flight had not been added in ARR zones and it was gods awful. It was the worst part of 2.X. Sanding It Down and A Performance for the Ages being the absolute most vile of quests to have to do with or without flight. Those two quests need to be reworked.

After completing 2.X I did spend time grinding GC ranks to start buying survival manuals to start speed-leveling Fisher through ocean fishing so I could cheese the overworld with stealth. Only took a day ocean fishing 4 times to get to level 60.

-With a whopping 94 quests in total, 3.0 was rapid. It took roughly 3 days to get through as the zones are enjoyable to coast around with stealth from Fisher and the quest pacing was alright.

-With 44 quests comes 3.X, same as above. Very quick and enjoyable to do especially with the aether current nerf. I admit I watched several of the cutscenes here.

Now comes, to me, the worst part about the MSQ, Stormblood. Whenever I have to do this expansion for my alts it makes my skin crawl. I would rather do ARR 5 times over than do this expansion's MSQ.

-With a 122 quest count 4.0 took around 7 days to get through. It was long, it was grueling and on several days I either didn't do any questing or did very little.

-With a 40 quest count 4.X ironically takes a long time to do. 5 days here.

I had failed my deadline thanks to Stormblood's slog. But I had finally reached the pinnacle of FF14, Shadowbringers. The expansion with the best pacing, the best story, the only expansion I watched every single cutscene on, prior to making this character.

-With 106 quests, 5.0 was quick work. Took 5 days to get through. Like HW it was enjoyable to go through even though I was speedrunning. Only thing unenjoyable was being forced to do the role quests again.

-With 51 quests, 5.X took 1 day to do.

[Mirhd]

We're just going in circles, and since that's the case, I don't see much point continuing. I'll just say a few more things and leave it here.

If you are going to shove words down my throat and misinterpret things I have said at the least take me out to dinner first. The least people could do is read my damn posts before hyper projecting into the sunset for the love of the twelve. I attempted engaging in cordial discussion until I hit my post limit but replies like this do little to make me wish to continue being cordial. Yall act culty sometimes. That is my opinion do with it what you will. Telling people to alter their mindset to enjoy something they clearly are not is.. creepy. Many apologies if that ruffles the jimmies? Amusing though how of alllll the things you could have replied to that I posted you chose that. Huh.

Not once did I put "words in your mouth." Per your other post (not to mention the above) :

This Mia believes the problem with these types is that you are not experiencing the medium the way they did, the correct way. Sounds almost cult like if you begin dissecting it. "No no no you just require the correct mindset young initiate. Once you see things the way we do it will all become clear."

You brought up cults, honey. I suggest you actually watch and/or read a few programs/books on cults by actual experts before throwing the word "cult" around so flippantly in an attempt to sound clever or deflect the arguments of another, as there's nothing "cult-like" in anything I've typed. That's also part of the reason I ignored your posts. The rest is that your "arguments" are just more repeats of what others are saying/have said, and that your tone is incredibly obnoxious. You may think you're being funny or cute, but you just come across as cringy and patronizing. Thumbs up if that's what you're going for, but don't expect others to engage with you in a sincere fashion when you can't be bothered to do the same.

Finally, telling someone they're coming at something with the wrong mindset is not "culty" what-so-ever. This applies to anything in life. Hypothetical scenario here. Say you're in grade school, trying to get on the track-and-field team, but you're only doing it because a friend is on and loves it but you have no real interest in it. It takes up a lot of their time so you don't get to hang out much, but you figured this could be another way to spend time together. You can either a) try to understand why your friend loves it, and maybe even begin to enjoy it yourself as a result, or b) acknowledge that it'll probably just frustrate you, forcing yourself like this, and endeavor to find some other way to spend time with your friend. Both are valid options. What isn't would be insisting your friend should stop doing it, or that the school should stop the program because you feel it "inconveniences you" in some way, which would also ruin things for others.

If someone wants to take this as me insisting skipping the story shouldn't happen... again, that's not what I've said at all. I even mentioned in the Alternate Start thread that I'm fine with people skipping as long as the narrative is maintained. What I'm not fine with is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

snip

Still isn't months, and it wasn't when I did it on new alts (such as my Viera during SHB), either, nor did I no life it. I also didn't think ARR was a drag when I started during HW, which was obviously before they streamlined ARR-post ARR, and I'm hardly the only one. I did feel they could cut some back and forth, which they eventually did, anyway. Helps that, unlike some, I don't think the game starts at "end game", which again, is the wrong mindset to have (This isn't WoW). That's lit throwing out a huge chunk of the game, which is just silly. Not directing this at you necessarily, but I'm throwing it out there since it applies to other posts as well.

snip

Won't go into this too much since I've already said my peace for the most part in earlier posts, so I'll just address one thing.

A lot of the "back and forth" was cut out, though, meaning you've just been referencing old information that's no longer relevant, so they're non-arguments. Further, the "team" thing is a strange complaint to make. You are still on a team, but part of being on a team means at times you'll need to split up or work in smaller groups to cover more ground before coming together to share information afterwards, which makes sense - it's more efficient than having everyone together in one place all the time.

If it wasn't clear before (I mean, I felt I made it quite clear), I don't have a problem with you, I just strongly disagree with your stance. Also, your English is fine, so don't worry about it.

[Faafetai]

You are not being made to "dance like a monkey" though...? What an odd thing to claim, and a very strange projection. To the bulk of this post though, I have to say this : if your parents and partner enjoyed it and had no real issues to speak of... it seems more like you are seeing something in the story/characters/systems that was never there to begin with. Your description of events and characters is rather... off. It's one thing not to like parts of a story/characters, that's perfectly fair, but it's another entirely to claim things that never happened. The one thing we agree on (and I have said this multiple times in the past in other threads) is the Titan questline in the level 30 range. That's just it, though; you're supposed to be fed up with these people. Hell, Y'stola wasn't happy with the Company of Heroes' nonsense and them wasting time while Titan could be potentially running amok, causing damage. Personally, I wanted to slap all of them

I am taking this from the wiki but this is what I mean. There are things that are hard to find now that things have been more changed since I was there which could have been why my partner wasn't so upset as well. There was a moment when they were in post ARR where they stopped to do a bunch of other things and would stop at each mile stone in order to not get burnt out by the story, by the time they got around to post that too had been cutdown. They also leveled a crafter to almost level 80 before finishing post ARR and were kind of sad they couldn't play gunbreaker. Doing the leveling roulette and msq roulette as well as alliance raids was not giving the amount of xp it gives after you actually get to heavensward. You are kind of slowed and gated unless you have the road to 70 buff which negates this limitation entirely.

Old Steps
Obtain the empty tub.
Place the tub in the river behind the tavern.
Fill the tub with water.
Obtain the water-filled tub.
Douse the mead-soaked midlander with water.
Report to Buscarron.

Current Steps
Douse the mead-soaked midlander with water.
Report to Buscarron.

The difference is what I mean. You had to do every step individually for everything. There were five or more steps which they reduced to two. Even the devs made it less grueling. I did the prior steps. All of them for every quest it has been reduced to two. After a while it kind of seems it was designed to keep you subbed longer being there was no content at the time of release. These steps may add some degree of emersion to some, but it is not like this for everyone.

Steps
Speak with Laurentius.
Speak with Laurentius again.
Speak with Laurentius yet again.
Speak with Laurentius... again.
Speak with Laurentius once more.
Speak with Laurentius one final time.
Defeat Laurentius and his party!
Report to Buscarron.

You are following him, but why do we let him get away time and time again in the first place. We are a capable fighter how is some random kid able to just get away. It is always like this all the way until smoke bomb plot because you can't resolve anything until one of the writers wants you too. Not when it would make sense. It is all the times we just move our hand and do nothing when something is happening. We are not part of the world but just living in it, which would be fine if we were not playing a custom made character. This works for other final fantasies because you are not the main character. Even Mass Effect you know you are playing Shepard. You know you can make choices but they will be limited to the characters scope. It may be one reason I find these things so strange. I personally wouldn't want to run around doing everything when I was suppose to be part of a team.

Thancred was the only one who actually worked with us during the Ifrit portion, everyone else is kind of just standing around saying snarky comments. And those stairs in Coerthas, up and down now back up now back down. That is the dance monkey dance. I just wanted people to stand in normal places. They moved the scions hq to be near an aethryte but Y'shtola's sister is directly between two of them. For black mage you are constantly being sent back to as one of my friends dubbed 'the wonder cave'. I think most of my gripes are with the quest design and placement of things not the story itself though. Finally pick up mechanist get stuck in a fate either I do, or wait till it ends while level 34 buzzards keep pulling so you can't do the quest.

You want to continue your paladin quests go into an area with hostile enemies a level 50 S rank hunt target and literally 2 fates on top of one another. You will be lower level so you are auto locked to the fate and one undergeared paladin and a horsebird are not going to be able to do that in a timely manor. I don't want to do fates right now, I want to get my new skill and get the rest of the story. I also do not want to be killed and have to walk all the way back.

I don't think I am seeing issues that are not there. I think I just notice things that others just forget or don't care about. Many just have rose tinted goggles looking back on just the story like my brazillian friend who forgot how much they were yelling over discord about the strange quest placement. Recently she forgot all about it and said that the quests line up perfectly with the story. Yes when you new game plus you can fly and you already played the game, you know the steps you know where you are going. You don't get lost. It is way easier to map things out with prior knowledge of your surroundings. I am sure I will think this way too when I replay some of it, but at the start it is not a fun experience. I had the pleasure of dealing with the fantastic bard quest where you get your soul stone in an area with a million hostile enemies that were a few levels higher. Under geared that was not fun.

Playing on the ps4 on an alt really made me see this. With the knowledge of where to actually go and familiarity of the world planning out where to go was way easier. This is not the case for the first experience for some.

English is not my native language so I am sorry if I missed something or some context in your writing.

Y'shtola made me so darn salty for titan, I was glad she yelled at them though, but she still sat down and waited for us to do all of our trials for them. I probably would resent the company heroes more with all of their quests if they never explained themselves. I can forgive them for making me run around all over the gosh darn place without flight, but at least later in many side stories and job quests they were really adorable. Also the gubal library there is I sware a diary entry of Wheiskaet admitting his love for Brayflox
>.<