So... I took a fresh alt character to EW in under 4 days worth of time

[DixieBellOCE]

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was around 2 days and 19 hours to complete the story start to finish skipping cutscenes and just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

[Avoidy]

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was [...] just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

I like how your argument for why the MSQ's length is exaggerated, is that a seasoned speedrunner who knew exactly what he was doing and was going as quickly as possible on purpose was able to do it in "only" 144 hours. I'm taking the unskipped CS metric because my main issue with the MSQ is that first timers, who are obviously not skipping the cutscenes, tend to quit the game before they finish the msq, in large part because they get burned out on the msq. Saying this as someone who used to run a CWLS for helping new players and watched like 85% of them just give up and quit around post-ARR or HW.

Even without talking about the length though, the actual nature of the gameplay is just unventful. It's a walking simulator. Me personally, I'd rather pay 20 dollars and just skip than deal with that again. Others can do what they like, of course. Nothing against the people who love the MSQ. But holy god damn, 144 hours is a pretty hefty time investment for most people, and that's like the optimal best case scenario. A first timer trying to just get to the part of the game where he can do fun content with his friends is looking at a much longer time, and we lose a lot of people on the way there. I don't see the point in discounting that just because some cracked out speedrunner did it in a timeframe that's still pretty damn long.

[RyuDragnier]

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was around 2 days and 19 hours to complete the story start to finish skipping cutscenes and just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

It's just the cutscenes that make the game long. Skip all the talking and sidequests in any RPG and you can likely beat it pretty fast. Hell, there's a reason why there's a trophy for clearing FF9 in under 12 hours. There's even a guide to GET every missable item and still reach the end of the game in under 12 hours.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

It's just the cutscenes that make the game long. Skip all the talking and sidequests in any RPG and you can likely beat it pretty fast. Hell, there's a reason why there's a trophy for clearing FF9 in under 12 hours. There's even a guide to GET every missable item and still reach the end of the game in under 12 hours.

Probably why many of them have mostly unskippable conversations instead of cutscenes (that also might be unskippable) in such games. Replay value takes a crippling hit, though.