Take your time with Dawntrail...

[Striker44]

I think one of the problems people are facing is burnout.... They trying to burn through the dawntrail MSQ in one sitting, so now they irrate with Wuk and whatever.

Im Taking my sweet time. I take time off between MSQ by doing the side quests and simply logging off and doing other stuff in RL. My advice if you all not enjoying, maybe slow down a little, breath the fresh air.

I stop playing and take a break once I notice I'm skipping the text or scenes. I paid for this expansion... I'm making for damn well sure I'm reading through the story!

I'll second this. I'm known for taking a long time to go through the stories. I've enjoyed all the expansions so far, but I still take my sweet time. I also get hooked on all the side content, so I deviate from the MSQ rather often. This isn't an MMO where the story is simply an excuse to get you to endgame and the intention is to just power through; the story itself is the meat of it. Trying to power through what's likely 60 or so hours of content is going to burn anyone out.

Have you never heard of being gripped to a story so tightly that you can't put the book down and end up reading until 6am because you just have to know what happens next?
If a story causes burnout that fast, that's usually a red flag...

I've heard of that. I love reading. Have a ton of books I've really enjoyed over the years. Even still, there's only one book I've ever read where I had that "can't put it down" feeling early on, and it's not even my favorite book of all time (but definitely near the top). Right now, I'm reading and really into "The Name of the Wind" and "Abhorsen", but I'll still only read maybe 2 chapters a day. Not a red flag at all, just the reality that my brain tires and loses focus trying to do any one, single thing for hours on end most of the time. The only exception to that is many of the good books I've read, I'll finally get that "must see what happens next" feeling when I get near the end, but at that point we're talking maybe reading 4 chapters in one run instead of 2. And that's not even taking into account the different effect blue light has on our eyes and our bodies - there's a difference between reading a book and staring at a computer screen for hours. FFXIV's story is also long compared to other MMO's. Imagine trying to read the unabridged version of Les Miserables in one go...

As I've said in another thread, there are WAY TOO MANY cut scenes now.

Yeah, I feel the cutscenes are excessive, too. Not that having so many cutscenes is itself an issue, but too many of them leave me wondering why they were made a separate cutscene instead of just normal dialogue, because they seem to only contain...normal dialogue...

[Nitelancer]

I don't hate Wuk Lamat, but they make her so stupid at times. Certainly not ready for the crux of the story and why we are helping her.

As I've said in another thread, there are WAY TOO MANY cut scenes now. I used to love when I saw that film icon after getting to a certain part of a quest. Now, it's annoying and pretty boring. Let us play the game, not listen to a cut scene for 5 minutes to tell us to pick 5 plants that aren't even hard to find, only to have another 3 minute long cut scene. I'm surprised Yoshi let this go out like this.

I agree. The constant interruption by cut scenes is the main cause of boredom and frustration for me. And in between those scenes, we don't do anything very engaging either, except dungeons and trials.

I had a thought a while ago that the MSQ has become something that would only be enjoyable for someone playing 30 minutes a day. Like how someone might watch an episode or two of anime a day. They log on, watch their 30 minutes of cutscenes, log out. It's probably less frustrating that way. But this is speaking to the boring nature of the story telling/story delivery. When I play single player Final Fantasy games, I want to play for hours at a time. That's stopped being the case with XIV's MSQ. It's getting hard to stay engaged with it due to the unnecessary cut scenes and lack of gameplay.

I would honest appreciate it if one of the MSQ was to kill 100 of some enemy just so I could spent some time actually playing, actually doing something, not watching heads nod in agreement.

[Kukajoo]

I dunno I find my experience to be quite the opposite. Dawtrail is the first expansion that took my nearly a week to finish, every other expansion took me 3 days, even Stormblood. Previous expansions kept me invested, kept me playing for longer at a time, kept me doing silly things like staying up an hour or two later to get through a particularly exciting part, so they passed in a blink.

Yawntrail, took me about six days to finish despite wanting desperately for it to end by the midway point, unengaged, bored, though through it all I grit my teeth and read every line and watched every cutscene. Wuk Lamat is annoying and all the npc's I actually liked like Alisae, Alphinaud, Graha, etc, were empty characterless husks.

[genuine_stranger]

I would honest appreciate it if one of the MSQ was to kill 100 of some enemy just so I could spent some time actually playing, actually doing something, not watching heads nod in agreement.

By this point, we should really ask ourselves why they even put in overworld enemies. They've been pointless for the longest time. We don't fight any of them outside FATEs, but those are their own thing and completely unrelated to the overworld mobs. Even quest objectives have their purple swirlies which summon the monsters you have to kill. So why bother to design and place them into the zones if the only thing we're doing is watching cutscenes and clicking through dialogue?

[Hyperia]

I absolutely agree with taking your time and also do the side quests as they show up. I have been loving the expansion, it is EXACTLY what I needed after Endwalker.

I believe the devs designed the MSQ with so many cutscenes for the story that if people wanted to skip everything, they could finish the MSQ in a few hours.

For those who love the story, it is all there for us but please do what Yoshi asked and do the side quests as they show up as they add a lot to the story.

[Striker44]

By this point, we should really ask ourselves why they even put in overworld enemies. They've been pointless for the longest time. We don't fight any of them outside FATEs, but those are their own thing and completely unrelated to the overworld mobs. Even quest objectives have their purple swirlies which summon the monsters you have to kill. So why bother to design and place them into the zones if the only thing we're doing is watching cutscenes and clicking through dialogue?

Some of the side quests have you kill mobs in the overworld (not extra purple swirly spawns), and there's always the hunt bills which are for overworld mobs.

[genuine_stranger]

Some of the side quests have you kill mobs in the overworld (not extra purple swirly spawns), and there's always the hunt bills, which are for overworld mobs.

I cleared all side quests, and the only instances I can recall in which I had to kill mobs without swirlies are those in the ARR and maybe HW zones. After that, it has always been the case of summoning or stepping into a circle.
And yeah, hunt bills, but I don't think anyone is really doing them. Perhaps I'm wrong, and they're popular, however from what I have seen, people either join hunt CWLS' or use an external site on which hunts are reported.

[Vahlnir]

I sure am taking my time with Dawntrail while skipping cutscenes.

[lolnotacat]

I've been playing since 2.5. Every expac that dropped, I happily played straight until finishing the MSQ. The end of ShB and EW felt like fever dreams because I was so exhausted and hyped up on caffeine at the same time, forcing myself to stay awake to finish them. Dawntrail on the other hand has been so bad and boring I've had to take multiple breaks just to tolerate it. I've taken a week off work to play starting with pre-release, and I only reached the last zone today because of how much I've had to step away, either out of boredom or frustration. Even at the worst parts of Stormblood, I was just able to power through the MSQ until getting to better parts. The problem isn't burnout. The problem is a bad fanfic story that can't even contend with Stormblood in terms of engagement.

[MsMisato]

the MSQ so far is extremely boring, and any form of character building is forgettable and that's a bad thing honestly.