ARR Needs Significant Cuts to the MSQ

[MsMisato]

my take is its the failure of the people that get invited to play by their friends and then their friends simply don't play with them? its all to often i see on reddit, and other outlets people get told how great the game is, they join because of their friends but they don't play with the people they were invited by because they don't want to and told to play with the trust system. Honestly I think the dev team should have implemented a system to allow vet players to use unlevel jobs to join in the story to play with the friends buy also get the xp from the story again when their friends are playing like the ffxi dev team did with the job sync system to allow people. as of now, you can't really help with msq quests with same level characters if you completed the quests already. sure you can revisit these quests but you get nothing.

I also think they need to do this with fetch quests though If you are going to do fetch quests, allow the player to either teleport to the npc that they need to report to complete or simply make it one quests to collect a set of items for most because that it was in ARR from the same damn npc. go get these come back. i need you to go this from this mob. come back. its a bit ridiculous and time consuming.

[DPZ2]

And the voice acting is terrible. Please tell me it gets better later ������

A Realm Reborn utilized US talent based in Los Angeles, while the direction and production were handled by a different team entirely. Starting in Heavensward those responsibilities were handed off to UK talent and a new studio, with a coordinated direction and production team.

It gets better.

[Aidorouge]

One thing I noticed is that after any major event in EW and DT, the NPCs quite literally tell you to take a break. They want you to STOP PLAYING THE GAME for at least an hour or two, hell even overnight, and mentally process what happened.

The emotional whiplash effect comes when you mainline the game in 16 hour marathons instead of nibbling at it in bite size chunks. When you pace yourself, slow down and follow the playtime pattern the game asks you to follow, the roller coaster turns into a much smoother and enjoyable ride. (This also applied to FFXVI's pacing problems.)

That's probably a result of most of these story segments being originally stretched out over the course of patches that spanned weeks/months. Anyone jumping in now is effectively able to "binge watch" an entire expansion if they don't stop to take breaks/do side content along the way.

Incidentally, ARR is a "50 episode premiere" versus the "10 episode seasons" that followed, so of course ARR is going to feel like a slog compared to the rest even if its not that much longer overall.
+++

I also think they need to do this with fetch quests though If you are going to do fetch quests, allow the player to either teleport to the npc that they need to report to complete or simply make it one quests to collect a set of items for most because that it was in ARR from the same damn npc. go get these come back. i need you to go this from this mob. come back. its a bit ridiculous and time consuming.

Even better, let friends help with the fetch quests by letting everyone "split up gang" to complete different tasks. It's not like the system isn't already in place either, given there's FATEs where people can either kill or collect stuff to turn-in thus letting people collaborate as they see fit.

But really, while I agree that part of the problem is veteran players doing a poor job of selling their newbie friends on the game, a lot of fault falls on Square-Enix for making so many things not 2-3 people co-op friendly. Even SWTOR, another story-heavy MMO, learned real quick that the LEAST you could do is let your friend be there chilling in the background during dialogue/cutscenes instead of constantly forcing a disband.

[DPZ2]

At level 20 after defeating Ifrit you are a hero. Now stop useless fetch quests entirely here and focus solely on the main thing.

Ever play World of Warcraft? Every single expansion up to Shadowlands held fetch quests for animal droppings that were hardly related to the "main thing". I don't know if there any after that or not, because I stopped playing in 2018.

After Ifrit, you get to decide on a Grand Company to join. You still aren't famous throughout Eorzea. You still start your career as a Private Third Class. The Company of Heroes do not know who you are either. Those quests are their way of testing whether we are worthy of the information necessary to get to Titan. You aren't really known world-wide until after the Endwalker main story line.

[ReynTime]

my take is its the failure of the people that get invited to play by their friends and then their friends simply don't play with them? its all to often i see on reddit, and other outlets people get told how great the game is, they join because of their friends but they don't play with the people they were invited by because they don't want to and told to play with the trust system. Honestly I think the dev team should have implemented a system to allow vet players to use unlevel jobs to join in the story to play with the friends buy also get the xp from the story again when their friends are playing like the ffxi dev team did with the job sync system to allow people. as of now, you can't really help with msq quests with same level characters if you completed the quests already. sure you can revisit these quests but you get nothing.

I also think they need to do this with fetch quests though If you are going to do fetch quests, allow the player to either teleport to the npc that they need to report to complete or simply make it one quests to collect a set of items for most because that it was in ARR from the same damn npc. go get these come back. i need you to go this from this mob. come back. its a bit ridiculous and time consuming.

What's the point? The MSQ is designed for solo play. Cutscenes ignore your party allies, sometimes teleport you away from your party, and constantly require you to leave the party for solo duties. The few purple circle monster moments in the MSQ are undertuned even for solo players. Trying to do the MSQ in a party only means the playable aspect is cut even shorter than it already is and most of the time is spent reading and watching dialog by yourself.
They'd need to come up with a co-op version of the MSQ for MSQ parties outside of dungeons and trials to make any sense.

[Zotoh_Zhaan]

I'm a sprout, I just played through it like 2 months ago. I don't think there should be any cuts to MSQ.

If square-Enix were smart. They would just do something that made it so ARR-HW-STB-SHB-EW and dawntrail became one era.

And make it so whatever the next expansion is everyone starts at level 1 again new players can start new expansion immediately like it was ARR, a new game.

Old era can be played at any time. It would solve level bloat and if new players don't want to play through 300hrs of content they don't have to... But it would still be there preserved.

[Alicie]

Ever play World of Warcraft? Every single expansion up to Shadowlands held fetch quests for animal droppings that were hardly related to the "main thing". I don't know if there any after that or not, because I stopped playing in 2018.

After Ifrit, you get to decide on a Grand Company to join. You still aren't famous throughout Eorzea. You still start your career as a Private Third Class. The Company of Heroes do not know who you are either. Those quests are their way of testing whether we are worthy of the information necessary to get to Titan. You aren't really known world-wide until after the Endwalker main story line.

Yes, I have played World of Warcraft.
When you buy the game, you receive a level skip straight to the newest expansion.
No grind, no chores, you pay - you get right into action.
Besides, you never needed to do these fetch quests. You can just spam dungeons, lol. Quests are optional. At least were at the time when I played.
And in addition I've heard that recently they made some unlocks account wide.
SE needs to learn a thing or two from Blizzard.

[FudoMyoo]

They already trimmed the ARR MSQ. I even re-roll another character to try it out.

It is so much better than in 2013.

[Valence]

I'm a sprout, I just played through it like 2 months ago. I don't think there should be any cuts to MSQ.

If square-Enix were smart. They would just do something that made it so ARR-HW-STB-SHB-EW and dawntrail became one era.

And make it so whatever the next expansion is everyone starts at level 1 again new players can start new expansion immediately like it was ARR, a new game.

Old era can be played at any time. It would solve level bloat and if new players don't want to play through 300hrs of content they don't have to... But it would still be there preserved.

Not gonna lie, the more I think about this option, the more it makes sense to me especially regarding the poor state and reception of the current job and battle design.

[Bubert]

Yes, I have played World of Warcraft.
When you buy the game, you receive a level skip straight to the newest expansion.
No grind, no chores, you pay - you get right into action.
Besides, you never needed to do these fetch quests. You can just spam dungeons, lol. Quests are optional. At least were at the time when I played.
And in addition I've heard that recently they made some unlocks account wide.
SE needs to learn a thing or two from Blizzard.

Go back to playing wow then instead of trying to bring wow into the Ffxiv.