Make it so the Current Expac MSQ doesn't level you

[Malthir]

I'll be honest, if I couldn't have played through Dawntrail's mainquest without worrying about levelling, and had gotten levelgated sometime in between this slog of a narrative, I would have just put down the game and not picked it up anymore. This is 100% on the writing, and I just wanted it to be over. And I've read that sentiment with others, too.

I also played some of the old ARR back in the day, and while I didn't stick around back then, I wasn't bothered by the sidequesting then because I enjoyed the early worldbuilding, the charm and personality in the side quests and activities, the care put into everything. It was also the start of the MMO, and I didn't feel any rush; I played it like a sandbox game.
But it's not that game anymore, and I don't think those times can be brought back short of just torching everything again and going "A Realm Re-Reborn" - and all that provided the writing gets at least back up to the level of ARR.

And I'm a story enjoyer. I've always watched the cutscenes, I went around to talk to characters between quest stages to hear what they had to say, etc. I don't even have a problem with "Go here, talk to X, watch a cutscene" for the main quest while it's good writing, and it's been that for a long time. I'll also sit through visual novels with no problem. As with others, Dawntrail singlehandedly turned me into a cutscene skipper and made me fast-push the button in dialogue if it was the same thing over and over again. "Wuk Lamat talks about peace again? The sentimental music? There won't be anything of value in this; skip."

Yes DT clearly has an issue with writing, I agree, but part of the issue is they are loading all the world building into the MSQ instead of letting it occur through gameplay. How many cutscenes did we have where random cultural things were discussed ad nauseam. These could have been side quest, optional story beats. Let me give you an example in the Vanu area, If you didn't have 500 go talk to wuk, now go talk to wuk somemore. Instead you have the entrance cutscene narrated by Erenville, Wuk introduces you to new tribe, then you don't speak to wuk again until you've gain 2 new levels from doing dungeons/fates/side content, it's just the her on the float cutscene, then do some more side quest dungeons fates, then the her being kidnapped sequence, then next area. Not going back to town to do 50 more cutscenes with Wuk.

The MSQ should be part of the game, not the WHOLE game. We have these beautiful zones, but the player never really spends any meaningful time in them. Run to objective wait for 4-5 cutscenes next objective 4-5 cutscenes, do dungeon, next zone.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, that was just a quick example, I'm sure people could come up with much better and more imaginative ways to do it, the point being is that GAMEPLAY should be the focus of the game. The MSQ should be a part of the game the same as side quests, fates, dungeons, leves.

The writing in DT is bad without doubt, EW was written better but still faced alot of complaints and criticism, because the underlying issue is there's been a massive reduction in focus of gameplay in favour of longer MSQ's. This means you have to hit a homerun every single time with 90% of the audience or your entire expac is bad. This is an almost impossible to meet feat, if they had more balance between gameplay and MSQ, the gameplay can carry the MSQ when it's not hitting home and vice versa.

[PaleYonder]

I agree with a lot in how the exposition is handled here, and it should be a lot more organic. I love stuff like environmental storytelling like in Fromsoft or Bethesda games (very different, but they both do that really well IMO), and in the past FF14 managed at least some of that with how it was worth talking to the random sailor standing over there to get a one-liner about his perspective on the dock issue or whatever. I'd like that back. And we've also had quests as part of the main quest in the past that introduced things in more natural ways and let us discover.
When one can trust the writing and overall environmental and activity design to provide that, that's a motivation to pause in between and do something to see more, or if one really wants to see how the main story goes on, then come back later, maybe with a different class. (On that note I wish the side quests gave more EXP to make engaging with the overworld besides FATEs more rewarding overall. And then one can also get creative with quest design there, theoretically.)
I also think one can do different stuff with the main quest.

It's just that enforcing breaks is frustrating at the best of times cause it breaks off narrative momentum and makes it feel like chores or homework you have to do to get back to the story when it should really be fun and voluntary activities you do of your own accord. That's when the story's good or at least adequate.
With Dawntrail, nothing would salvage this negative momentum, it just is what it is now, and the best I could do to even still enjoy the rest of it was to get the MSQ done once so I'm free of having that looming over my head; the MSQ has turned into the chore, and now I can finally go around alone and level things and do dungeons etc.
One exception, the aether currents hunt that I normally resent as a pointless chore was a nice reprieve this time, so I prioritised it in new zones. But then I wanted to get on with it and get it all over with.

If the writing and world design had been strong as usual, I'd have had motivation to run around and explore on my own cause I'd have been curious about the world and would have wanted to see more, and I think that's how it should be. I'm catching up on some old side content right now, and the difference is like night and day, and it makes the state of Dawntrail even sadder.

[Malthir]

I agree with a lot in how the exposition is handled here, and it should be a lot more organic. I love stuff like environmental storytelling like in Fromsoft or Bethesda games (very different, but they both do that really well IMO), and in the past FF14 managed at least some of that with how it was worth talking to the random sailor standing over there to get a one-liner about his perspective on the dock issue or whatever. I'd like that back. And we've also had quests as part of the main quest in the past that introduced things in more natural ways and let us discover.
When one can trust the writing and overall environmental and activity design to provide that, that's a motivation to pause in between and do something to see more, or if one really wants to see how the main story goes on, then come back later, maybe with a different class. (On that note I wish the side quests gave more EXP to make engaging with the overworld besides FATEs more rewarding overall. And then one can also get creative with quest design there, theoretically.)
I also think one can do different stuff with the main quest.

It's just that enforcing breaks is frustrating at the best of times cause it breaks off narrative momentum and makes it feel like chores or homework you have to do to get back to the story when it should really be fun and voluntary activities you do of your own accord. That's when the story's good or at least adequate.
With Dawntrail, nothing would salvage this negative momentum, it just is what it is now, and the best I could do to even still enjoy the rest of it was to get the MSQ done once so I'm free of having that looming over my head; the MSQ has turned into the chore, and now I can finally go around alone and level things and do dungeons etc.
One exception, the aether currents hunt that I normally resent as a pointless chore was a nice reprieve this time, so I prioritised it in new zones. But then I wanted to get on with it and get it all over with.

I see what you're saying and I agree with more overworld story telling, I just don't see anyway they can manage to make the MSQ more engaging gameplay wise. They could try by adding more and more solo duties into it. Ultimately though it's nature is to be the story which is going to involve alot of standing still listening to people talk. The problem you have is if they make the cutscenes less dense/MSQ smaller and still allow you to go all the way to 100 people will hit 100 so fast and then the complaints of, I've already reached max level the MSQ was too short. There's a tricky balance, I think some forced breaks can be good, but I'm more than willing to concede the point if people can come up with viable alternatives.

[Deejudanne]

if the msq didnt give any xp i'd be upset

[Kaurhz]

I could get behind decreasing the EXP from quests so that there are portions gated by needing to do side content, but the removal of it? Nah.

I don't entirely think massive lore-related info dumps should be relegated to side-content, otherwise you only inhibit the directions you can take the story, unless you really want to start confusing players, or create this whole idea by implied-mandatory side quests. This is a bad idea.

They don't need to get rid of cutscenes and lore information to sidequests. They just need to find more meaningful ways to tell that story which otherwise doesn't involve a cutscene but rather gameplay, e.g., solo instanced duties. This is the healthy medium for it. Putting lore dumps behind optional content only creates a mess. From memory there were a good 3-4 places not otherwise early on in the story that could have been solo instanced duties rather than a cutscene. You could have even created ones which don't necessarily resort to solo-instance combat but rather puzzle solving, or even just generally killing powerful monsters in the overworld which you need to use a key item on. Doesn't need to be novel, just needs to be another way of telling that particular part of the story.

Otherwise all we're doing is solving 1 problem by putting it somewhere else entirely.

[Malthir]

if the msq didnt give any xp i'd be upset

I'm not saying don't give any I'm saying so that you don't just get to 100 by following MSQ, while also reducing how big the MSQ is, spend the resources on the openworld/gameplay. So revamp how fates and side quests work giving them meaning, make dungeons have their own independent storyline again.

I could get behind decreasing the EXP from quests so that there are portions gated by needing to do side content, but the removal of it? Nah.

I don't entirely think massive lore-related info dumps should be relegated to side-content, otherwise you only inhibit the directions you can take the story, unless you really want to start confusing players, or create this whole idea by implied-mandatory side quests. This is a bad idea.

They don't need to get rid of cutscenes and lore information to sidequests. They just need to find more meaningful ways to tell that story which otherwise doesn't involve a cutscene but rather gameplay, e.g., solo instanced duties. This is the healthy medium for it. Putting lore dumps behind optional content only creates a mess. From memory there were a good 3-4 places not otherwise early on in the story that could have been solo instanced duties rather than a cutscene. You could have even created ones which don't necessarily resort to solo-instance combat but rather puzzle solving, or even just generally killing powerful monsters in the overworld which you need to use a key item on. Doesn't need to be novel, just needs to be another way of telling that particular part of the story.

Otherwise all we're doing is solving 1 problem by putting it somewhere else entirely.

You're right, I think removing all lore would be a bad choice. I just mean some of the less then relevant stuff when it comes to lore. That's on me for poor phasing, I mean they should prune the MSQ and far more selective on what NEEDS to be MSQ in particular with lore dumps for random tribes when it's not going to be story relevant again.

[Avidria]

I mean personally i like that i don't need to stop in the middle of the story to go level up to... continue the story. But then i like the story so far which i seem to be in a minority on in these forums lol

[Loggos]

...and the game isn't relying so heavily on having a brilliant storyline 24/7. You can write a mediocre story and people will care less when it's not constantly in their faces for 30hr straight.


Updating for clarity: I'm suggesting the MSQ should be smaller, it should still give some xp just not enough to get you to max, less cutscenes, massive lore related info dumbs that aren't pertinent to the plot should be side content that's optional etc, get rid of alot of pointless cutscenes that repeat the same thing said 20m ago almost as if they knew they'd bored the player to sleep and had to remind them. Make the MSQ short sweat drive the plot but have the bulk of playtime be actually gameplay, be that a better fate/quest/dungeon/leve system. That's the way the game needs to move in the future to avoid having this situation again. Dawntrail MSQ being boring for alot of people, is a Symptom not the issue.

From a game design perspective I agree with making other content more relevant and breaking up the MSQ approach with considerably more active gameplay segments.
(I don't necessarily mean being forced to stop to spend time to level though. I don't personally appreciate these enforced interruptions of the story flow. Rather, I want these active parts to be integrated into the MSQ experience. Let us do Fates, mini games or whatnot instead of fetch quests.)

But I disagree strongly with the quoted part. Better game design should not lead to the devs settling for mediocre and/or shorter stories (nor to us accepting them because we now have some other things to do).

Whereas I think the pacing, esp. of the action and battle content, of the MSQ needs some serious overhaul FF14 is a story-heavy game and should always strive to deliver on that front, too.

They clearly didn't this time, so they need to fix both: their gameplay pacing and their current storytelling.

[PyurBlue]

You do the entire MSQ because just the MSQ alone is enough to get you to max level, all major content is gated by the MSQ and the MSQ is very long. Why would you do any other side quests, fates etc?

I very strongly disagree with this line of thought. This is the kind of philosophy that makes me concerned about the health of a game. Why do people need incentives to do what should be fun activities? The reward for doing content is entertainment in one form or another. If it's not innately interesting and people will only do it for a physical reward (I'm including XP in that) then it's failed content. A game filled with uninteresting content that is all propped up by rewards is a miserable experience and I'd advise developers to stay as far away as possible from such a thing.

The best sidequests in FF14 have been the ones that pulled my in by interesting premise alone. Whatever XP or items I received were quickly forgotten. That is the ideal for optional content, at least in my mind. No carrots on sticks that turns potential interesting activities into soulless chores that are best ignored.

The MSQ should provide the XP to level through the expansion by itself so that players are free to evaluate side content on what matters, like plots, combat, characters, etc. The alternative is to plug the rewards into spreadsheets and speedrun to the end to get the XP reward.

[Post]

Yeah, I think there's definitely some merit to OP's idea and the game had, inadvertently or otherwise, managed to fit other content in with the MSQ in previous expansions better. I think 100% MSQ only really started with EW intentionally, anyways, which made sense given they were trying to wrap everything up.

But other posters aren't wrong that they shouldn't be able to just do the MSQ and that the pacing and writing issues would be sufficiently addressed by the thread idea.

I wanted to toss in that I felt like the previous expansions giving me more combat through the MSQ (as my own character, by the way) contributed more opportunities to get good at my job before I subjected endgame groups to me. As boring as they can be, FATE bosses sure gave me a compelling reason to want to maximize my DPS.

I'd argue the MSQ mostly just teaches us how to read instead of play now, except that we clearly still struggle to read our actions or boss debuffs...