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

[YukikoKurosawa]

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.

Maybe they should do actual research on a game before they play it to know if it's for them or not rather than just assuming it will be like other games they've played?

[YukikoKurosawa]

I would rather just see players be allowed to skip it if they want once they reach max level for that expansion. They are spending enough dev time on reworking old systems when we could be getting more end game stuff.

What end game?

[IdowhatIwant]

Maybe they should do actual research on a game before they play it to know if it's for them or not rather than just assuming it will be like other games they've played?

There are some people that avoid trailers and stuff to avoid spoilers in movies and video games. So some people do not do this for that reason.

I am really shocked at how people that have already completed the MSQ don't want it to change to improve the new player experience. I will be honest if you replay this games MSQ frequently you are a masochist, cause it honestly is not that fun in any expansion. It is just simply a long story, which players can get with out actually playing through in the game already.

The best way to engage new players and keep new players is give them different options of leveling or experiencing the game. There shouldn't honestly be any reason why a player can't just buy the game and start dungeon grinding up to the current expansion. There shouldn't be any reason why some one can't just go spam deep dungeon or explore side content to level up to the current expansion. It is fine to have the story gate keep the current content, but it shouldn't gate keep old content, specially now that you have the unending codex on top of the unending journey inside the inn, and new game +. It is just gatekeeping to think players should have to be forced to go through that slog unless they want to.

What end game?

This is another problem as to why player retention goes down after a month or two of the expansion launch.

[EaraGrace]

There are some people that avoid trailers and stuff to avoid spoilers in movies and video games. So some people do not do this for that reason.

I am really shocked at how people that have already completed the MSQ don't want it to change to improve the new player experience. I will be honest if you replay this games MSQ frequently you are a masochist, cause it honestly is not that fun in any expansion. It is just simply a long story, which players can get with out actually playing through in the game already.

The best way to engage new players and keep new players is give them different options of leveling or experiencing the game. There shouldn't honestly be any reason why a player can't just buy the game and start dungeon grinding up to the current expansion. There shouldn't be any reason why some one can't just go spam deep dungeon or explore side content to level up to the current expansion. It is fine to have the story gate keep the current content, but it shouldn't gate keep old content, specially now that you have the unending codex on top of the unending journey inside the inn, and new game +. It is just gatekeeping to think players should have to be forced to go through that slog unless they want to.

To be fair, I can’t think of a single long open world story that I’d be interested in replaying again. The closest is something like Disco Elysium, but only because of branching narratives and content that you can be locked out of, neither of which would be a good idea to implement for 14.

[Amenara]

Maybe they should do actual research on a game before they play it to know if it's for them or not rather than just assuming it will be like other games they've played?

How much research are people supposed to do before buying a game? Are they supposed to read reviews? Watch gameplay trailers? Listen to randos on youtube tell them its the best game ever made?

If you are the kind of person that looks at maybe a few sources to get the general gist of the game and go ahead and try it out. Depending on where you look you may or may not get the feeling that you are gated from doing a large amount of content by the games story. You may or may not get the knowledge that you will be spending hundreds of hours playing the game before you will make it to the end of the "leveling experience" and be able to do the current level content.

It is pretty harsh to just say they should do "research" on a game before they play it, especially when researching a game is different to every single person. The MSQ is bloated and has a lot that needs to be cut to make the leveling experience for new players better as well as reduce/remove the gates the MSQ puts on a lot of content in the game.

[YukikoKurosawa]

There are some people that avoid trailers and stuff to avoid spoilers in movies and video games. So some people do not do this for that reason.

You just completley misinterpreted what I meant. You should do research on a game to understand what kind of game it is prior to playing it (like you would not play Life is Strange if you don't like interactive movies and wanted a First Person Shooter). What kind of genre it is, what is the game about? Anyone doing research into FFXIV would know it's a story-focused game and would treat it as such. The problem with people like the afformentioend is they do no research because they just hop on bandwagons and just assume they will like X game because it's currently popular and trending as this game is right now, and are then in for a rude awakening when they discover it's not.

Also, if they don't care about the story, why the hell would they care about spoilers? Looking into a game to know if it's for you or not has absolutely nothing to do with spoiling the story for said game and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

This is another problem as to why player retention goes down after a month or two of the expansion launch.

Endgame focus is a cancer that needs to stop.

[YukikoKurosawa]

How much research are people supposed to do before buying a game? Are they supposed to read reviews? Watch gameplay trailers? Listen to randos on youtube tell them its the best game ever made?

Is this a serious question?

[Amenara]

Is this a serious question?

No it wasn't. The point I was making in the rest of the post was that everyone researches games differently and depending on what you do you may not have any idea just how gated the game is behind the MSQ.

[YukikoKurosawa]

No it wasn't. The point I was making in the rest of the post was that everyone researches games differently and depending on what you do you may not have any idea just how gated the game is behind the MSQ.

If you did even a semblance of research into this game, and especially if you are familiar with final fantasy as a franchise, you would know this is a story-heavy game from the get go. The real problem is people who hop on bandwagons and just want to play whatever is currently popular rather than finding the right game for them. Because that's why we have so many people coming in and getting filtered by the story. This game has been trending since last year and it's brought with it a wave of FOTM types who just want to be where they percieve everyone else to be. These are not the type of people to have patience for a story game in general. They are oversocialized idiots who just go whereever the wind is blowing.

Researching a game prior to playing it is an alien concept to them. All they think is "Game popular, I play game cuz that's what everyone else is playing!". The opinions of these cretins does not matter and they will not be missed when they are innevitably filtered.

[Amenara]

If you did even a semblance of research into this game, and especially if you are familiar with final fantasy as a franchise, you would know this is a story-heavy game from the get go. The real problem is people who hop on bandwagons and just want to play whatever is currently popular rather than finding the right game for them. Because that's why we have so many people coming in and getting filtered by the story. This game has been trending since last year and it's brought with it a wave of FOTM types who just want to be where they percieve everyone else to be. These are not the type of people to have patience for a story game in general. They are oversocialized idiots who just go whereever the wind is blowing.

Researching a game prior to playing it is an alien concept to them. All they think is "Game popular, I play game cuz that's what everyone else is playing!". The opinions of these cretins does not matter and they will not be missed when they are innevitably filtered.

That's a pretty toxic mentality to have towards new players. I agree about people joining the FOTM train and we should be taking advantage of that by trying to hook new players into the game with better gameplay, a better way of telling the story and not forcing people into hundreds of hours of story just to play the entire game. The 1-50 experience in this game right now is abysmal and SE isn't fixing the problems with it. They are trying to make an MMO that is single player friendly without making the gameplay at the beginning more fun. It is even worse when a vocal portion of the community talks about how great HW is and how much better all the jobs are in HW, but new players have to push through 2 button gameplay for 20+ levels with rotations only getting marginally better through level 50. They have to push through a bloated MSQ in ARR to even unlock HW while seeing their jobs level going up and all the skills that are locked behind being in HW. Potentially they will out level HW and get no new skills for the 50-60 experience while still doing ARR content.

We should want to reduce gating behind the MSQ so more people can do more things and we should want to reduce the bloat in the MSQ to a minimum.