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

[silentwindfr]

...snips...

Yoshi-p did look at what wow because at this time the 1.0 was a mess... something that was coming from an another ages... but it end here... Wow barely create anything, they simply did retake what was existing somewhere else for make it part of the game. them amazing insight was to arrive to merge all of this.
but at the same time.... wow did grow lazy with time, refusing to really evolve.
when you play FF14 today and check what it was in the 1.0 or 2.0 the game have changed a lot. they always try to recreate stuff and improve. but they are smart enough for know that some stuff are working and using them too.

that said, people complaining about the story in FF14 are.... weird... FF14 was always known for his story. i agree the quest of the 2.0-2.X need to be redone... but if you think about it... they are quite old now. and they plan to change this for ages, but they need time to redo the quest, the cinematic and such... it's not an easy task especially since they continue to pump content into the game at an insane pace.
and honestly, skip is not a good idea, some part of the story is insane and honestly arrive to endwalker without experience all feel like a loose. because the story of the expansion will feel less interesting, you will not have meet the character nor learn to love them or hate them.

FF14 is a story game with mmo component. if someone come to play the game without doing the story... i feel they have miss the whole point. yes you have tons of different activity you can do... but i feel they have more meaningfull if you know the world in which you evolve. why wow did work soo well... because of warcraft 3 and the character powerfull that did draw people into this world. at least that why i was part of the first wave in wow vanilla.i did play until cataclysm and did stop after... because for me they had loose them way after lich king.
but here i'm always draw back, because this world is loved by the dev as much as we love it... making every patch having an impact on us...

Now that I am reading more posts the question I have for people opposed to making the MSQ gate less content is how does affect your ability to play or your enjoyment of the game? The MSQ teaches you nothing about how to play your character or be good at the game so making less of it mandatory won't affect the quality of players at your level or in dungeons you are doing, even more so with dungeons in ARR and soon to be every expansion soloable. If you choose to go back and make an alt and go through the entirety of the MSQ that should be a choice you can make, but if you would rather just skip the post ARR MSQ and move to HW I don't see why that is an issue.

And for the argument about just buying a story skip, doesn't that invalidate any point you would make about the importance of playing through the story? If the story is so important why would SE give you the option to purchase a way to skip it? Why not let people skip the post expansion content if they just want to keep pushing forward with their characters instead of holding them back to sit through story they may or may not care about?

more i have a question... why play the game? if you want a game where you play with other you have tons of other game similar where story are escuse? why not learn to enjoy the world?
and you say it will not people play better and such, true, but why the fact that they don't want to do msq impact me? i like the fact that content is gated behind the story. it make dungeon, raid more interesting... at least the content gated behind msq are understandable than some content you can find in game a la wow where a dungeon is more an escuse for get loot and do a mission in group.

all in all, why people doesn't wanting to do msq must affect people that love msq? or enjoy the fact that content is gated behind it for make it part of the story...

[Amenara]

more i have a question... why play the game? if you want a game where you play with other you have tons of other game similar where story are escuse? why not learn to enjoy the world?
and you say it will not people play better and such, true, but why the fact that they don't want to do msq impact me? i like the fact that content is gated behind the story. it make dungeon, raid more interesting... at least the content gated behind msq are understandable than some content you can find in game a la wow where a dungeon is more an escuse for get loot and do a mission in group.

all in all, why people doesn't wanting to do msq must affect people that love msq? or enjoy the fact that content is gated behind it for make it part of the story...

I can't speak for everyone, but I play the game because I enjoy playing with the friends I have made along the way. As for the reason other people play the game it can be as varied as they like the story, gameplay, raids, glamour, RP, really any number of reasons. Pigeonholing people into one aspect of the game because you and others think people have to enjoy the story to want to play FF14 is a narrow way to approach any game, especially an MMO. Everything you said is a personal opinion for yourself and may not be the same for everyone else. All I am wanting is that people have the option to play their leveling experience in a way that they enjoy vs forcing them to play through hundreds of hours of MSQ that they may or may not want to.

[pikalovr]

now this is coming from somebody who tolerated the story up to HW cause i only tolerated ARR cause i understood it was the "world building" chapter of the story but to sit here and say that people complaining about ARR story being a slog gameplay wise not even story wise (and yes there is still ALOT that could prolly be trimmed story wise from post ARR) are weird is in and of itself weird. if i wanted a story with slow progression in gameplay i'd play a JRPG, it's one of the biggest reasons people hate the it's a JRPG that just so happens to be an MMO perspective. you're denying an entire side of the GAME to justify locking out for another part. how would you feel if you had to clear ultimates after leveling for 100 levels to unlock a super well crafted story and the leveling felt bad? then do what those people are and say you want to have access to the story but there's no way to skip to the ultimates to reach the story (and no don't hit me with the whole buy story skip BS)

you starting to see why this is catch 22? there's a reason most story based games are in fact single player games or if they are multiplayer they lock alot of the worldbuilding behind sidequests, NPC conversations in the overworld, random events, etc... also if you want a game with a good story why not go play like any of the other FF games? you see how stupid that argument is?

having an alternative path to reach content that people want to play is not hindering you in any way. yoshi-p will still make a well crafted story but now we're not punishing people who might see this MMORPG as a more beginner friendly MMORPG (which is the way it's headed sadly but i digress). or for example hell i didn't even join for the story i joined for the music and the fact i could test and play all jobs on one character, plus i had seen older gameplay and thought wow there's a bit of depth to this. now thats not to say i didn't come to like the story post ARR but the point is that if they do want to experience the story later on it's almost as if we have an entire system for going back and TAKING your time to complete it/watching major CS and that can be accessed while having access to everything the game has to offer

and as i said when i suggested a simple alternative system for skipping the story the dungeons and trials themselves are more than enough to setup a basic story for each expansion in a vaccum with some slight overarching points ala ARR and STB with the garleans