Length MSQ from all the expansions - it is getting insane

[Atelier-Bagur]

I miss ff11 and old mmo style quest that gives a sense of danger and exploration. In ff11 i loved exploring zones and how quest built the world of an expansion and brought you deep into dangerous parts of a zone.

Same, I seriously wish the game fun started in lv.1, not in just endgame. Although I criticize this with most MMOs now, not just FFXIV

[Nebelheim]

Same, I seriously wish the game fun started in lv.1, not in just endgame. Although I criticize this with most MMOs now, not just FFXIV

Yeah it seems the trend started with wow and now every mmo is all about the endgame journey rather then the journey along the way. Older mmos i felt had stories that mattered and had people working together now it seems story based mmo games are more solo playing with occasional co-op. In ff11 I had fun starting at level 1 trying to explore and level and getting beat up by random lizards and sheep and rabbits. Or sneaking into the furthest corners of a zone with sneak/invisible for a quest marker for a quest fight. In ff14 most jobs and content don't get fun until level 70+ at least for me in the current state of the game.

[Kyrj]

Probably needs a trim but even then I still argue the msw quests are just dull and uninspired in terms of gameplay.

Only reason I feel most people give passes to Heavensward and Shadowbringers msq even though its still the same garbage quests is due to the mob mentality of the story being good. Even though its strength lies on what came before in order to make people care about its narrative.

I wish they both trim and redesign all the quests to be more involved but thats a difficult and a tall order to make for how little newer players care about it since a lot of them are goaded to follow the narrative in its entirety anyway. Its why msq reactions become so popular and its not just YT or Twitch. I see this on other platforms like Twitter and Reddit. Its why FFXIV is succesful because it plays into the narrative crowd like a netflix show.

They need to find something new for the MSQ, the whole Go talk to NPC 1 who sends you to NPC 2 who sends you to NPC 3 who then sends you to a purple ring on the ground where you fight two mobs that just fall over or you click on an item and then return to all three NPCs, is getting old as hell and I can't have the only engaging content in the MSQ be three trials. At this point the MSQ isn't a game, it's a movie where you occasionally press a button.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I miss ff11 and old mmo style quest that gives a sense of danger and exploration. In ff11 i loved exploring zones and how quest built the world of an expansion and brought you deep into dangerous parts of a zone.

There were a few things in FFXI that helped it achieve that.

Many areas had fairly wide spread of enemy level ranges and often also had NMs and HNMs that were much higher level than the highest level normal enemies. Some cases these NMs and HNMs were actually endgame level wandering around low level areas. It's something I feel the Xenoblade Series actually built upon and improved. However additionally at least originally since I'm not sure if they changed it eventually some time later when they boosted the level cap past 75, enemies were given superior stat scaling to players which is why players would be able to easily solo enemies over their level early on but frequently struggled with enemies below their level solo unless they were built well.

FFXI also had those campaign battles in the past where you had skirmishes with beastmen forces trying to take outposts or allied forces trying to reclaim lost outposts and Besieged in Aht Ugran which the battle in the city was cool on it's own but you could also run into the advancing army before it actually got to the city as well.

Also the activities like Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar, etc felt like actual raid content which Bahamut Coils and Alexander kind of scratched the surface of before they turned raids into trials set 2.

[Eastwall]

You should definitely get option to story skip on alts, once one of your character finishes story. But I doubt that's ever happening, there's some nice money for SE in selling story skips.

And I'm for more voice acting. It's not-a-cheap AAA with main focus on story, there are no excuses for having only some 1/3 of story voice acted, especially when much less profitable games like GW2 have voice acted everything including player (5 races * 2 genders = 10 VAs just for player character) and even just random NPCs randomly chatting in overworld.

Oh yes, that's what l enjoy the most in gw2. I love the va on my female asura during the story

[RitsukoSonoda]

Oh yes, that's what l enjoy the most in gw2. I love the va on my female asura during the story

Yes... and when you kids become completely reliant on everything being audio and forget how to read, I will be able to leave sticky notes everywhere knowing the information on them is more secure than anything in your digital world... :P

[PyurBlue]

There were a few things in FFXI that helped it achieve that.

Many areas had fairly wide spread of enemy level ranges and often also had NMs and HNMs that were much higher level than the highest level normal enemies.

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I think levels tend to be the problem. All they do is separate people artificially. You could be the best FF14 player in the world, but you wouldn't be able to do anything past your level no matter what just because it's either prohibited or impossible stat wise. If MMO's didn't forcibly separate people by level and were designed around cooperation, there would probably be a lot more incentive to party up. Though even if there is any merit to that idea, I don't see how you'd implement it in an existing game like FF14. At the very least we could stop locking new expansions off by level and maybe give new players some reason to venture beyond ARR, but FF14 suffers from a very inflexible story, not to mention the massive difference in stats between early and late game. Perhaps there would need to be a separate zone with its own leveling.

[RitsukoSonoda]

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I think levels tend to be the problem. All they do is separate people artificially. You could be the best FF14 player in the world, but you wouldn't be able to do anything past your level no matter what just because it's either prohibited or impossible stat wise. If MMO's didn't forcibly separate people by level and were designed around cooperation, there would probably be a lot more incentive to party up. Though even if there is any merit to that idea, I don't see how you'd implement it in an existing game like FF14. At the very least we could stop locking new expansions off by level and maybe give new players some reason to venture beyond ARR, but FF14 suffers from a very inflexible story, not to mention the massive difference in stats between early and late game. Perhaps there would need to be a separate zone with its own leveling.

Depends on how the enemy levels are used. When an area has a wide range of levels it enables looping progression that essentially has players return to areas multiple times at different stages of the game. Enemy stat growth per level in FFXI was probably it's largest incentive to party up for content at higher levels, Having looping progression to get higher level players routinely returning to even early game areas made it easier for lower level players to get help if needed. You could argue that FFXIV's social aspects have suffered immensely due to how easy an overwhelming majority of the game is paired with it's extremely linear design.

[Luluya]

Since I am a veteran MMO player, played them since 2001.
I hate this hand-holding that this game has.
Also, the number of hours you have to spend to play through the ALL msq is just insane.
I am the type of player who likes to have tons of alts and does not like the idea of having all classes on one character.
I like playing every class on different characters like in all other games out there.
It feels like SE is forcing me to pay story skip since it takes me more than 30 days to complete msq on single character. Mostly because I hate it, and I hate it because it is not voiced and there are too many fetch quests. The old republic has all quests voiced, maybe because the number of them is so much smaller than FFXIV.

I don't understand the bolded segment, it seems to contradict the rest of the post as you are asking/desiring for the game to be more friendly/'handholding' to players who maintain multiple characters.

Not that there's anything wrong with having alts (I have many) or wanting a smoother experience for them (mogstation stuff comes to mind), but that part of your post really seems out of place.

[Nebelheim]

There were a few things in FFXI that helped it achieve that.

Many areas had fairly wide spread of enemy level ranges and often also had NMs and HNMs that were much higher level than the highest level normal enemies. Some cases these NMs and HNMs were actually endgame level wandering around low level areas. It's something I feel the Xenoblade Series actually built upon and improved. However additionally at least originally since I'm not sure if they changed it eventually some time later when they boosted the level cap past 75, enemies were given superior stat scaling to players which is why players would be able to easily solo enemies over their level early on but frequently struggled with enemies below their level solo unless they were built well.

FFXI also had those campaign battles in the past where you had skirmishes with beastmen forces trying to take outposts or allied forces trying to reclaim lost outposts and Besieged in Aht Ugran which the battle in the city was cool on it's own but you could also run into the advancing army before it actually got to the city as well.

Also the activities like Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar, etc felt like actual raid content which Bahamut Coils and Alexander kind of scratched the surface of before they turned raids into trials set 2.

I think ff14 could draw from all those combat things from ff11 especially the overworld and instanced content. We had eureka and bozja but to me they didn't capture the oldschool ff11 style mmo very well. I would love campaign battles in the overworld or besieged where hordes of monsters invaded uldah and the other city states.