YOU CALL THIS A EVENT??

[Arrius]

Almost no one wants an exorbitant RNG grindfest like you describe. People simply want to play the game and not just read a bit of text, that surely is not too much to ask?
Currently, there is no "rest of the event" after you have read through the questline. No fates to band together, no unique challenges to tackle with friends. You simply read a bunch of text by yourself.

I get to find some NPC's from other places that show up at the venue and watch them chat, and there are the mansion and garden area I use for snapshots for myself and with friends.

That may be a dull thing for some, but I do like the smaller things and appreciate the places available for the duration of the event.
Sure, showing some initiative by yourself might be offputting, but SE has the gaming community in-game in mind when it comes to that. Else we wouldn't get things like the Nimble Warrior Tower where everyone collectively tries to get to the top, or the explosive photo stage during the Moonfire Faire for a quick snap op.

Could there be more? Sure.
But saying there's nothing else there? Nah.

[ovIm]

I get to find some NPC's from other places that show up at the venue and watch them chat, and there are the mansion and garden area I use for snapshots for myself and with friends.

And no one says these things should cease to exist. But that truly cannot be all a game has to offer, no?

That may be a dull thing for some, but I do like the smaller things and appreciate the places available for the duration of the event.
Sure, showing some initiative by yourself might be offputting, but SE has the gaming community in-game in mind when it comes to that. Else we wouldn't get things like the Nimble Warrior Tower where everyone collectively tries to get to the top, or explosive photo stage during the Moonfire Faire for a quick snap op.

Could there be more? Sure.
But saying there's nothing else there? Then that's just you.

Lol. Watching preprogrammed NPCs running around is not exactly a way to engage with a game, so yes, that is "nothing".

The Nimble Warrior Tower is a good example of what Square Enix is able to do, and yet you speak of watching NPCs and taking screenshots. If that is all you want from this program, then that is fine, but for those that want a game, you have to admit that this is nothing.

[Syln]

do you remember I think was 3-4 years ago we got a small special dungeon for the saint wake and I wished they would have build something from this but nope they scraped it the other year

Even if it wasn't that good (or bad) at least it felt like there were some efforts put into the event. This is disheartening to see how apathetic they currently are. At that point I expect to watch the ff14 version of "You think you do but you don't" or "Don't you guys have phone" during a fan festival.

They never have been the fastest to react to feedback or the most audacious when it come to trying new things but damn did it worsen over the years.

[Miguel85NYC]

Almost no one wants an exorbitant RNG grindfest like you describe. People simply want to play the game and not just read a bit of text, that surely is not too much to ask?
Currently, there is no "rest of the event" after you have read through the questline. No fates to band together, no unique challenges to tackle with friends. You simply read a bunch of text by yourself.

Yeah I dont get it and this is the reason why we dont get good stuff, people just want to read instead of playing..

[CuteBucket]

Maybe, just maybe, they could bring back the older events that they already made for the seasonal events, AND give us a little new thing each year?

Y'all are acting like it's either "keep things exactly how they are because it's perfect" or "add an entire new event with new mechanics and rewards for every event." I just miss the little things the did like special instances and minigames from previous years. I really don't feel like that's asking for much.

The little instanced events like the Valentione event and the All Saint's Wake dungeon even were fun to me because I played through them all with my friends. Why would I go to a halloween party with a bunch of total strangers when I could invite my buddies? That's what those little events are for me, just a chance to have some fun with my friends and make silly gposes together at the end.

[Thistles_Leaf]

I think the issue is that SE only ever thinks about making everything story-driven because of how it's a "story-driven game". At almost the complete expense of action and actually doing things.

So when there's an event, their main concern is making a sob story where we have to feel sorry for someone and heroicly help give them confidence to achieve something relevant to the event. At the end of that story we're meant to feel all happy and clap and it plays a victory sound of some form.

I'm sure this works for, say, someone who literally only has time for seasonal events due to a busy work life and wants a little positive cute heroic story to get them in the spirit of the season.

But when you do all the rest of the stuff in the game, just being yet another sob story (completely unvoiced) makes it draining to bother.

They could just say "hey! want to participate in the event? go to that haunted manor over there and see if you can get through it without being scared!" and then let us do whatever haunted dungeon they made.

I just started last week and already %90 of my "gameplay" is reading text on autoscroll. I am glad i figured out the automatic text advance feature. Otherwise most of my gameplay would be pressing LMB to advance text.

I had an idea that some of this was present in the game but am quite shocked as to how much of the game is actually just reading. So its a story....ok. I am here to play a game not read for most of the time.

Not to make yet another wow comparison but even taken the RNG and timegating out there is tons of stuff to do in wow. So far all ive done is read, quite a few solo duties/scenarios and a few dungeons. Like 10. And i use the crystals a lot to get around. I am gonna get bored of this really quick if this is all i am gonna do.

[ovIm]

I just started last week and already %90 of my "gameplay" is reading text on autoscroll. I am glad i figured out the automatic text advance feature. Otherwise most of my gameplay would be pressing LMB to advance text.

Reading this does make me feel sympathy for you, but I have to be super honest - most of the Main Story Quests are reading or watching cutscenes, you only occasionally break that up with a boss fight or a dungeon. There is very little content that combines gameplay and storytelling. Sometimes, you have to watch hours of cutscenes before the next gameplay bit approaches, and those are disproportionally short.

So unless you are already invested in the story, you may consider taking frequent breaks from MSQ to check out the content you have already unlocked, or just buy a skip and keep yourself busy playing through the backlog of content you have not experienced yet. (Which reads super awful, recommending new players to skip the story, the big selling point of this game, and a big portion of the single player experience.)

[ovIm]

I just started last week and already %90 of my "gameplay" is reading text on autoscroll. I am glad i figured out the automatic text advance feature. Otherwise most of my gameplay would be pressing LMB to advance text.

Reading this does make me feel sympathy for you, but I have to be super honest - most of the Main Story Quests are reading or watching cutscenes, you only occasionally break that up with a boss fight or a dungeon. There is very little content that combines gameplay and storytelling. Sometimes, you have to watch hours of cutscenes before the next gameplay bit approaches, and those are disproportionally short.

So unless you are already invested in the story, you may consider taking frequent breaks from MSQ to check out the content you have already unlocked, or just buy a skip and keep yourself busy playing through the backlog of content you have not experienced yet. (Which reads super awful, recommending new players to skip the story, the big selling point of this game, and a big portion of the single player experience.)

[Jeeqbit]

I am gonna get bored of this really quick if this is all i am gonna do.

I'm not gonna lie to you, it's like the previous poster put it. As I said in what you quoted, it's a story-driven game: there is the base game, 5 expansions (which are like a game's worth of story each) and each of these has 5 major story patches. Most of that is either reading or watching voice-acted cutscenes.

Then there are absolutely hundreds of sidequests per expansion:

• Across the zones in the game (6 zones and 2 city states per expansion)
• Each job has multiple stories (33 class/jobs including crafters/gathers) and 4-5 role quests for a few of the expansions
• 3 beast tribe stories per expansion
• A number of custom delivery stories
• Story quests for each "optional" dungeon/trial/raid (we have around 100 dungeons and for each expansion we have 3 optional trials, a normal raid story and an alliance raid story).
• Every game feature has a story quest preceding it, even if it's quick/simple, such as hunts, maps, hair styling, dyes for gear, striking dummies, etc.

So in a way it's the ultimate test of if you can handle what the game throws at you constantly every time there's a patch.

That said, if you get through all of the story quests in the game, which could take years depending on pace, then all that's left is the battles and the action: Extreme/Unreal trials, Savage raids, Criterion dungeons and Ultimates. These are the main raids and thus popular but there's more midcore stuff you can try like Eureka, Bozja, deep dungeons, alliance raids, hunts or the blue mage masked carnivale - none of these are really "hard" in a raid sense but not necessarily as much of a pushover as all the quest mobs and MSQ dungeons you're currently doing.

I'm not necessarily suggesting skipping, but if you're not a story person then sometimes that's easier. Some people (like myself) just dig the stories in games and if I'd started the game now, I'd have loved the fact there's all these expansions worth of story, but we seem to get a fair share of people join the game who just want to do stuff and not read, especially with how the game's story is overly imbalanced towards dialogue over action.

[Catwho]

I like that the seasonal stuff is short and sweet. I don't want in-depth limited time events that cause FOMO. If they're going to make something elaborate and special it should be saved for things that are permanently in game, not stuff that we'll get to do once. The only way I'd be ok with more time going into it is if they let you get the items the next time the event comes around, and we know they're not going to do that because they put the seasonal stuff in the cash shop.

This. And the things that they did spend a bit more time and effort on usually are brought back, like the haunted house, or the tea party area in Gridania for screenshots.