New player(s) thoughts

[Payadopa]

Because it's not enough - Don't you find it strange that you have to try and make your own fun out of the game between MSQ? I'm not being disingenuous with my points in any way, we often struggle to keep anyone interested because in the end, they still need to go through the 400 hours of MSQ. Regardless of how fun you make the in-between, the time proportion of fun/unfun is just too great.

My comparison here is that in WoW, you can do everything - Even MSQ together. It all syncs, and you both gain experience and rewards no matter what level you're at.

"Sorry, can't - I'm doing MSQ right now"

Seems like we have different definitions of 'making your own fun' then. Raiding and such is more like another 'attraction' to me. Holding a glam pageant (which we did) or RPing would fall under making my own fun, not using the PF for battle content. I see your point, and I partially agree. What I don't agree with is that the MSQ is this unbearable, suffocating thing. When I'm in the mood for story time, I do it. When I'm not I'm not. And I very much enjoy what's on offer. I agree with the 'Sorry, I'm doing MSQ', though. That does happen often.

[Rolder50]

Why do people keep saying there is 400 hours of Main Quest?

I have just completed shadowbringers, and I am up to 10-days played. 240 hours.

I like how the counter to it being 400 hours, is that it is "only" 240 hours.

[PirateRyanG]

I like how the counter to it being 400 hours, is that it is "only" 240 hours.

240 hours for what is essentially 4 full games of content.

I am sure it would have been much faster if I didn't have so much downtime doing other stuff in the game.

[R041]

Seems like we have different definitions of 'making your own fun' then. Raiding and such is more like another 'attraction' to me. Holding a glam pageant (which we did) or RPing would fall under making my own fun, not using the PF for battle content. I see your point, and I partially agree. What I don't agree with is that the MSQ is this unbearable, suffocating thing. When I'm in the mood for story time, I do it. When I'm not I'm not. And I very much enjoy what's on offer. I agree with the 'Sorry, I'm doing MSQ', though. That does happen often.

I think we mostly agree - What sucks is that most players won't immediately get the full FC RP experience that you're getting. So the MSQ is mostly what they get, and at that point it definitely can feel suffocating when they can't do much of the other full MMO content until they unlock it way down the road. I just want the game itself to provide easier methods of coop that don't require FCs to pad for you.

The coop isn't as natural, and sometimes it can feel very isolating unless you join a really active FC.

[PirateRyanG]

You're admitting what I'm saying.. I never said there was no coop. I said it's too far and few for an MMO. Feel free to read the rest of my posts in this whole thread.

My hypothetical friend will have to do 3 hours of MSQ to do a 15 minute dungeon, then back to MSQ. Repeat for 300* hours. This was OK when the MSQ was just ARR+HW, maybe even Stormblood. But the length of this type of experience is getting extreme.

That's not enjoyable. Sorry, it's just not. I'm glad that you're okay with that, but it's not up to par with the other experiences out there now. We need to do better.

With WoW, you actually don't have to progress much to coop - You just need to meet min ilvl to do the dungeon, you can unlock most BFA dungeons by level 20 which you can do in an hour on a new toon. You don't need to meet some arbitrary story req. Otherwise anyone can run quests with you in open world, and content is synced allowing you to use your high level kit with your friend. If you finished the 'MSQ' or certain quests, you can do a 'Party Sync' to match the player and run the series of quests helping them along the way.

WOW is a different type of game, though.

Those dungeons are meaningless without the story behind them (for some players)

If you want to run meaningless dungeons, play WOW.

If you want your dungeons to have a bit of an impact when you do unlock them for story purposes, play FF14.

I have run RFC countless times over the years. Can't tell you a damn thing about the story. Same with the original DM. I was horde. I could run it, but couldn't tell you a thing about the story because those quests were not accessible to Horde players. It was just...a dungeon.

ESO is the same. I love ESO, but I have no connection to the dungeons because there was no build-up to being there. They just exist. I can't for the life of me tell you the story behind many of those dungeons. I don't know why I am there fighting a big spider or a cult. I just...am.

With FF14, unlocking a dungeon felt like a milestone. Something I have worked for. Like, the culmination of a story.

You seem to want something in FF14 that it isn't attempting to be. I guess we want different things from our games. I want a personal connection to whatever I accomplish in FF14. The dungeons to be milestones. To have a big build up to them.

Dungeons like Snowcloak (for instance) would be pointless without the story leading up to it (chasing down the lady). Proving my worth to Hræsvelgr, pointless without the lead-up story. Many of the dungeons are like that in FF14. You don't feel anything for the dungeons unless the game leads you there. They are part of a story. I wouldn't want to touch them without everything beforehand.

[R041]

With FF14, unlocking a dungeon felt like a milestone. Something I have worked for. Like, the culmination of a story.

You seem to want something in FF14 that it isn't attempting to be. I guess we want different things from our games. I want a personal connection to whatever I accomplish in FF14. The dungeons to be milestones. To have a big build up to them.

It's not that I want it to attempt to be anything new, I want what FFXIV WAS, and has moved away from in ARR+HW. (The Trials/Raids/Mechanics are way better in Stormblood-Endwalker)

I think what we want is just something different - If you've played WoW for so long, and I've played FFXIV for so long, I think it's just that we want a shifted experience and for something new to happen. I want both games to learn from each other. I actually have a massive list of PROs/CONs for both. lol

I've enjoyed what I've found in WoW/BFA, and the dungeons do have story for their zone. You're right that depending on the Region I may not have the backstory so it seems like just a normal dungeon. But to be fair, a ton of the FF dungeons are just filler story set pieces anyway. Most dungeons aren't meaningful until Post-MSQ for each expansion.

But what I've experienced in FFXIV, is that they have reduced systems, or have completely forgotten about them - So excuse me if I'm a bit grouchy after playing for a decade in what seems like a game that continues to mock my ability to play it the past 4 years, if given the opportunity Yoshi would probably just play the game for us with how steamlined and minimalistic everything's become.

I'll play both, because they both provide different experiences - But I'd love if XIV 7.0 would provide us with more immediate coop experiences.

[Iscah]

I like how the counter to it being 400 hours, is that it is "only" 240 hours.

Ultimately, these are Final Fantasy JRPGs wrapped in an MMO format. A single-player JRPG will often boast about the length of the game in its advertising.

50-80 hours for each of the "five games in the FFXIV series" sounds pretty standard for JRPG length.

[SannaR]

Dislike him or don't, but MrHappy did do a post quest trim run of ARR and got about a little over 47hrs for all of just ARR MSQ so yeah your 400 is a huge exaggeration. Also you seem to ignore or highly dislike that you have to use NG+ in order to gain more of that co-op you want.

I think you're playing the wrong FF MMO if you truly want what you say you want. In the way you want it. I normally wouldn't suggest XI but it allows you to choose whatever story you want and forces you to party up with people as most of the early trusts you can get have fairly dumb AI. Course I haven't touched it in years, but I'm still fairly certain that just because you can unlock the various expansions at lv 30 doesn't mean anything outside of Chains of Promothia won't have things that will eat you you for breakfast. As most of the other expansions will have monsters that are meant for lv 60 characters at least.

[R041]

Dislike him or don't, but MrHappy did do a post quest trim run of ARR and got about a little over 47hrs for all of just ARR MSQ so yeah your 400 is a huge exaggeration. Also you seem to ignore or highly dislike that you have to use NG+ in order to gain more of that co-op you want.

I've talked about this over and over, so please feel free to run through my post history. NG+ doesn't provide more than basically a mutually shared single-player experience. Not an actual coop experience. It's akin to watching a movie of text dialog together with brief intermissions of actual coop.

And like I said, we can say 300 hours, it doesn't make it any better, because by next expansion it's just going to increase our new player time separation anyway. So in 2 expansions it'll be a strict 400 and they'll continue to strip abilities away from lower levels? Does that make it good? Are we all going to start celebrating once we hit the 1,000 hour MSQ mark and we're still running around with Alphinaud?

Something's gotta give eventually. Level crunch, MSQ split, something. We can't keep growing linearly like this.

Also nah, I ain't leaving. Lost cost fallacy and all that, even have the 1.0 Collector's Edition and have stayed subbed since. So I'm 'fraid you're stuck with me. lol

[SannaR]

More like 188hrs so a little over half that 300hrs for all four if we're going to assume each expansion + .1-.5 are roughly the same amount of time. That 47hrs was also with long dps que times. Which a solo new player wouldn't have to suffer since I don't think ARR had duty support back during 5.3 which is when he went and did it. And yet you still ignore the times you and the other person (people) can spend time outside of the dungeons as there's plenty of times throughout the MSQ where you end up having to kill open world mobs.

Or the fact that you insist that said person (people) won't ever want to stop and smell the roses along the way as Coils, Alexander, Mach, Ivalice, Omega, Eden, Nier or the extreme trials won't be intriguing enough. Or that they somehow don't count as something to do on their journey to reach current end game. You are fully capable of going through the MSQ via NG+ on a different job. You'd have the armory bonus for it.

So yes the quests themselves wouldn't be giving you any xp, but it wouldn't stop you from getting any from the dungeons. And if you have side quests you could go and run those. Heck you don't even acknowledge PotD as something you could do along the way. There is plenty of things you can do with others while they're going through all of the expansions. Even HoH once they get high enough. But no let's just be so fixated on the MSQ only and discount anything and everything that's not current "endgame" as somehow not content you can do with a new person.