When are we as player going to demand from SE a better MSQ experience

[Hycinthus]

How would you improve this anyway?

[Roda]

I'm not gonna poopoo on that sequence too much cause at least it was gameplay. And

since he was her bully figure it's only fair that she would canonically get the win. Though it'd be nice if we got an ogcd to cheer her on and get more lb

The biggest sins for me are (full story spoilers)

the alpaca contest, the cook-off, the float fixing and parade sequence, the seige, and the freaking train ride should've all been gameplay sequences AT LEAST

There's probably more, but those ones stuck out to me the most.

[CazzT]

I dont have any big complaints about it. seemed pretty standard FFXIV fare personally.

That's the problem OP is talking about. This is the 6th expansion. It shouldn't be the same thing as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th expansion with a different story to tell. Where is the innovation and creativity?

[Garolymar]

There were so many opportunities for them to do neat duties in this expansion too.

The cooking festival should've been an actual duty where you gather and mix ingredients to make the tacos, The attack on the train could've been a shooter segment like they have at the golden saucer. Also I'm miffed we never got a friendly duel with Koana, Thancred and Urianger as a battle duty

[HappyTrees]

It's pretty good point, an excellent story hides that pretty well and personally never cared about it in SHB and Endwalker even Stormblood...Once it becomes less good you start to notice it.

They could definitely spice it up or at least do what WOW does and add more rares, treasures and achievements for players to do.

I agree. It's been years since I played WoW, but from what I remember Blizzard utilizes the zones a lot better. You're rewarded for exploring and you can find a lot of cool stuff hidden in treasure chests or by killing rare mobs. It gives you a reason to explore the zones and helps break up the monotony of questing. Meanwhile, in Endwalker, I felt like I was being shuffled from one area to the next. Outside of aethercurrents or gathering there's not much reason to explore the zones and they only seem to exist for the sake of the MSQ.

FFXIV has a linear story, but I think too much emphasis is placed on the actual story and not enough on the gameplay. Epic cutscenes are nice and all, and I have to say what I've seen of the Dawntrail ones are very well done. But at times it feels more like I'm playing a visual novel instead of an MMO.

[Lusarae]

I am hoping that this less well received start to a new story serves as a wake up call for them to finally modernize the gameplay aspects of the MSQ.

Full agree. We had an amazing writer for the last two expansions, why did we replace her with someone else? Don't fix what ain't broke.

As for the gameplay it's just depressing trying to play this game with a friend. You're just watching cutscenes without each other. You're fighting solo scenarios and maybe like 2% of the quests let you kill some mobs together. Then you get like three or four dungeons to do and suddenly its over. We need more active storytelling. Something like the variant dungeons. That you can solo if you wish, or bring just one other player in with you. Have the npcs talking as you're fighting.

The "escort" quests need to be redesigned from the ground up. No more clicking on them to get them to speak. They need to chat with you, on their own, in voice acted dialogue as you move about an area. Think how much more exciting getting to explore the new city would have been if you didn't have to drop everything to watch a static cutscene every time you got to a new part of town. Just have you run around at your own pace, exploring certain objective markers in whatever order you wished. Hearing them talk as you pass the markers.

Even for the "MMO" experience they could improve things. Like when you get to yet another cutscene area you just see a crowd of people "afk" in the cutscene with the movie logo. How about instead, have like a fate-esque boss fight that scales to however many people are attacking it. So you can all fight it together, get a nice bonus reward for participating, and then move on with the plot. You could even have little events like the stuff you can do in town MSQ moments like the Ishgard Restoration Fetes. Imagine instead of having to talk to some boring npc you'll never see again, you have to play a minigame alongside other players to 'learn' the lesson they were trying to teach you when making that dish for Lamat's cooking trial.

All the fun stuff we can do as a community is just not in the MSQ for some reason. Like how come there's no jumping trials at all? Like the golden saucer, but something you have to do for the MSQ progression. It doesn't have to be Kugane tower difficulty but it could be similar to the golden saucer stuff which I'd sag 95% of the community can do without much trouble. Basically we need more gameplay. Active storytelling. Save the cutscenes for the super heavy moments that would never want to tempt anyone to try and skip it. If its you just farting around doing nothing important then it needs to be you traveling somewhere with the npcs talking, or you killing something with npcs/friends, etc. Let us push our buttons. I'm sure there's plenty of other better things they can come up with its not my job to come up with it all.

[Lusarae]

I dont have any big complaints about it. seemed pretty standard FFXIV fare personally.

That is literally the problem. Standard FF14 fare doesn't work when the story is unable to carry the weight of the entire expansion.

IThe game is 10 years now, its golden path design needs to mature past its torrent of fedex quest designs and cutscene vomit.

like if SE could pivot their design philosophy to treating cutscenes and dialog as rewards for gameplay rather than a replacement for it, that would be a good start...

That's the best way I've seen anyone put it.

To be fair if this post about the Japanese forums https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...dawntrail_msq/ is to be believed, the writing is no better in it's native language.

Warms my heart to know the Japanese community feels the same way. Higher chance of the devs actually reading it and listening.

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

I'm not really "doing tasks" for them I'm watching others do all the work. It doesn't feel like I'm interacting with anyone either, SE hasn't given us proper roleplay yet. If we had a MSQ in the vein of that KOTOR MMO where we actually had choices we could do that had meaningful consequences and personalized our experience that would be great. But the 5% of the time they game finally asks for our input its essentially, do you pick "Yes!" or do you pick "Maybe, well sure."? Even the meaningless ones where you can poke fun at other characters or be a goofball seem a bit more limited than it used to be in previous content. Please let us RP if you're going to stick us in cutscenes.

All people are asking for is some agency. Agency is what you get when you're allowed to RP in all the cutscenes. Or you're fighting monsters. What's the point of these grand vast gorgeous zones if you don't even get to hunt any of the monsters in it? Is a "fetch quest" really going to be different in tone/narrative if I fetch some rock in the wilderness, as opposed to fetching some npc or a forgotten bowl in the safety of town? We're adventurers not butlers. Let us adventure.

[CosmoBabylonia]

I'm sorry, but this is some next-level irony coming from an Umineko fan.

He is just spinning the chess board around. He got you good huh?

[Little_Giant]

They should start with adding more story through gameplay scenarios. I think single player duties does this decently well, we just need more of it to balance out the all the talking in the cutscenes.
Any situation where I can actually use my abilities in the story is a good situation.

[Voidmage]

Agree. DT is sadly really lacking in the game aspect regarding the MSQ.

Normally I don’t have a problem with cutscenes but this time I was almost begging to do anything.

Anyone remember the Ronka puzzle in Shb or the hangover stuff in EW?
Simple storytelling through gameplay to break the cutscene monotony.

I think the biggest problem this time around is that the entire expansion is centered on one Charakter namely Wuk Lamat.
There is a several disconnect at least for me given that we have no role in the story.
We are not really a mentor but aren‘t adventuring either. We are just „there“ to stand beside the main character but are not unimportant enough to not be constantly at her side and can’t even be alone in our room without her barging in.
We don‘t even do anything in the story for the most part, just standing there nodding.

It’s really strange.

I actually like the story itself minus the pacing but the missing gameplay and the third wheel status of us really sours it for me.

Estinien is more of an adventurer now then we are…

Just at least give me ANYTHING to do in the MSQ. I would even pick up rocks again!