Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[DPZ2]

Unfortunately, that will cost a new player $50 in addition to the $60 for the game. That’s $110. Would you tell a friend to spend $110 to be 40 hours away from endgame?

No. I would either join that friend in the leveling process on an alt or invite them to join a Free Company to which I belong and help them out as needed. I don't find the MSQ to be as horrid as some players make it out to be.

[LittleImp]

I only gonna pay that much if I enjoy the whole package, not just a tiny bit of it. This is like order a whole pizza but you actually hate the pizza itself and only want the sausage on top.

This is.. not a good analogy at all.

It's often touted as a theme-park MMO, so let's stick with theme-parks instead.

It's not abnormal to go to a theme-park to ride specific attractions while ignoring others. Imagine if you went to a park that required you to ride "It's a small world" for 200 hours before you were allowed to ride any of the roller-coasters LOL.

[Deveryn]

If I'm talking to a friend about starting this game, I'm telling them what to be prepared for as far as the story goes and I'm helping them along the way.

The game has done well to actually let people be able to play through all the story without hitting any stumbling blocks, where past games have these vast empty spaces where players used to be. You don't miss out on anything by running the story at your own pace. If you gets a story skip, Endwalker's story will make zero sense because the story calls upon so much from the very beginning of the H/Z saga.

Yoshi has said they're looking into how they address the long path for newer players once EW is properly wrapped up and 7.0 is set to launch. I'm sure we'll hear more about that next year.

[Raven2014]

This is.. not a good analogy at all.

It's often touted as a theme-park MMO, so let's stick with theme-parks instead.

It's not abnormal to go to a theme-park to ride specific attractions while ignoring others. Imagine if you went to a park that required you to ride "It's a small world" for 200 hours before you were allowed to ride any of the roller-coasters LOL.

Sure, if it's a community park with low or free entry. But the poster I responded to is posing a $100 invesment as a problem. So this is more correct to compare to say you don't plan a trip to Disneyworld to enjoy ONE ride.

Well, you can if you have money to spare, but you don't get to complain, not reasonably anyway. And my point still stand that I would never advise someone to invest in a Disneyworld trip for just one thing they can enjoy, not matter how much they enjoy it. Go only if you can enjoy the majority of what the package has on offer.

[Aword3213]

Other games like WoW, GW2, ESO2, BDO, PSO2, New World, and Lost Ark have better experiences for new players.

No, they don’t . Some are even worse than XIV.

Terrible examples really

[Amenara]

Wanna know the worst example of this? Current FFXI. Good luck trying to follow a cohesive focused narrative where a bunch of seperate story threads you randomly stumble on and get instantly lost.

I disagree. I appreciated how the stories tied together, especially Zilart and Promathia and then Rhapsodies of Vanadiel coming in to put all the pieces together. I liked how the narrative wasn't just given to you and the genuine eureka moment when you realize how things were tying together. Obviously it isn't for everyone but it was enjoyable to me.

I don't understand why people bitch and moan about the MSQ. You're not "forced" to do it. You're choosing to do it by playing the game. The only reason you're "forced" to do the MSQ is if you approach FFXIV like World of Warcraft- where the endgame is the only thing that "matters", where all you care about is raiding, where the leveling process is something you need to get out of the way so you can get to the "real" game.

Nobody's forcing you to play FF14.

I mean, you are forced to do the MSQ if you want to play the game as it gates most everything else in the game. I agree though that the endgame isn't the reason to play FFXIV unlike in WoW. FFXIV's real purpose is the journey of 1-90 and not necessarily the destination. In WoW the real purpose is doing endgame as that is where their content exists as opposed to FFXIV's content being the story.

My complaints on the MSQ stem from how daunting it is to know you are investing hundreds of hours into a game where there is realistically no other gameplay content than the story until you get to 90 unless you can find like minded people to do synced raids or trials while you are leveling up. Sure there are side things that you can do while leveling but the vast majority of your gameplay experience is in completing the MSQ. My hope is that they either prune it or give an option to prune it for new players or even just start a new story in 7.0 that lets you have the option to start your adventure there.

[Shurrikhan]

Sure, if it's a community park with low or free entry. But the poster I responded to is posing a $100 invesment as a problem. So this is more correct to compare to say you don't plan a trip to Disneyworld to enjoy ONE ride.

But, while they might fall under a single banner, "non-procedural, (to most) non-trivial combat content, with at least transiently relevant rewards" still accounts for a majority of the game's developed content across any given expansion.

Not caring about MSQ, minigames, PotD/HoH, Exploratory Missions outside of currently relevant relic questlines, islands, and the like isn't asking to go to just one of a hundred attractions; it's more akin to wanting to ride a roller coaster at Six Flags.

[RobynDaBank]

This is.. not a good analogy at all.

It's often touted as a theme-park MMO, so let's stick with theme-parks instead.

It's not abnormal to go to a theme-park to ride specific attractions while ignoring others. Imagine if you went to a park that required you to ride "It's a small world" for 200 hours before you were allowed to ride any of the roller-coasters LOL.

Honestly this isn't a good analogy either. FFXIV is Final Fantasy first with a story to follow foremost. WoW as well can't be that theme park because since Shadowlands you need to do a campaign before you're let loose (and in SL you had to mandatorily do it once to unlock Threads of Fate quest/dungeon leveling on alts). So neither of these giants have this ultimate freedom theme park design.

And honestly that's fine. YMMV. If a friend I asked to play gets put off by MSQ, it's not the end of the world. They just don't like the idea. It's not a cope, but being told that "ARR sucks and is suuuuper lengthy" or "you have hundreds of hours before you until you can do anything at all (which is untrue)" harmed how I felt about the game more than actually playing it did.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I disagree. I appreciated how the stories tied together, especially Zilart and Promathia and then Rhapsodies of Vanadiel coming in to put all the pieces together. I liked how the narrative wasn't just given to you and the genuine eureka moment when you realize how things were tying together. Obviously it isn't for everyone but it was enjoyable to me.

Yeah but how am I supposed to tie stories together as a new player when everything is so disjointed? What if I wanted to follow say the base story or how am I supposed to know which narrative goes into what? Seriously, it feels like its worse to even attempt to understand Vanadiel because of its own open-ended nature when you stumble on a cutscene that supposed to chronologically happen like 2 expansions later? Its even worse when different cutscenes just non-chalantly happen in the same location! Its a big mess and its an experience I dont think it would work for people who want to play FF for its story. Say what you want with how long and somewhat restrictive to what you can do because FFXIV's msq dictates content but it still does it well and it easily helps you understand its world, characters and place in a focused narrative. I think people have a skewed way of treating the msq as this daunting thing when really its just 4 games in one connecting package. The game knows its a focused narrative experience from the beginning with ARR and that never changes. I play FFXIV, because I like to play FFXIV. If I wanted to play FFXI or WoW where story isnt content then I play those games. Its ok to have games be different from one another, not every game needs to follow a rigid formula for how it approaches its experience.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly this isn't a good analogy either. FFXIV is Final Fantasy first with a story to follow foremost. WoW as well can't be that theme park because since Shadowlands you need to do a campaign before you're let loose (and in SL you had to mandatorily do it once to unlock Threads of Fate quest/dungeon leveling on alts). So neither of these giants have this ultimate freedom theme park design.

You're treating "must do (any) one prior expansions' stories (or any mixture of each) to level up for the current expansion" as equal to "must do every prior expansion's stories to be readied for the current expansion"?

Doing whatever you like to reach level 60 -> doing basically whatever you want to reach level 70 and thereby unlock questing in any order (as in DF)... is quite the distance from doing every bit of MSQ for every prior expansion atop the current one.

And honestly that's fine. YMMV. If a friend I asked to play gets put off by MSQ, it's not the end of the world. They just don't like the idea. It's not a cope, but being told that "ARR sucks and is suuuuper lengthy" or "you have hundreds of hours before you until you can do anything at all (which is untrue)" harmed how I felt about the game more than actually playing it did.

On this I'd agree. Especially now, it's not... that bad. I'd love to see classes get about their lv50 kit by lv30 instead, while spreading out the 52-80 stuff more evenly over 35-80, but those (over)statements can draw attention to those flaws more than excuse them.