Can I progress in storyline without doing dungeons?

[Estellios]

The item levels on dungeons are incredibly low, you will not have to spend long. Hell you will probably meet the item level requirement just by running through your newly-available dungeons once each and picking up gear and buying a new piece with the stones you get.

Storyline iL requirements currently cap out at 60 which is incredibly easy to get and you have many options of reaching that: Mythology stones, Dungeon Farming, Crystal Tower, and buying i70+ pieces off the boards.. Anything higher than i60 isn't storyline related.

The storyline imo should be completable by everyone. It's a story. I dont care what other people do as ling as it doesnt impact my game. I dont need uber gear, myself. If I could do some sort of 'e-z mode' dungeon which would not drop anything except msybe an acheivement which didnt give any stat buffs etc, I'd do that.

Also it is completable by everyone. Not only are these iL requirements really easy to get, as in maybe an afternoon at most to accomplish, the Post-game storyline primal fights are very low-stress and can be completed even with a few people dead.

[Urielparadox]

IF you are referring to Coil well my dear that is a different thing. The binding Coil of bahamut which has an i70 requirement is endgame and you get a 15% echo boost in there now making it stupid easy. coil is ENDGAME not main story(though related and great story). Also there are 2 duty roulettes that you can do, hard mode and trials which give you an extra chunk of myth for just doing 1 dungeon/fight a day, Trials rarely take over 20min and dungeons rarely over 40. A lot of people don't grind dungeons repeatedly, and they get there myth slower, it's a trade off.

[Ketsuyame]

Once upon a time, the bread and butter of car manufacturing and purchase was the Model T Ford. Thankfully, we've moved beyond that now.

So what is it you're saying? Because unlike the Model T ford, this formula has been working for well over a decade. And it'll more than likely be around for even longer, whether you admit it or not. The Model T went the way of the dodo. Dungeon grinding isn't.

[Ecosmith]

That last bit was an analogy.

[Ecosmith]

Lol I think we'll have to agree to differ on the definition of 'working well'.

The Model T was in production for 19 years, btw. Not that that's particularly relevant to MMOs, but next time you're in a pub quiz it might help.

I'm not attacking your beloved 'rush to endgame and grind grind grind' model, I'm just suggesting there are other ways to do things. And they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Model Ts are lovely cars. And so are Ferraris. The roads should be big enough for both.

[Failia]

I can't really see where MMORPGs can progress to that you may be referring to. The entire point in having dungeons/raids/instances is to have repeatable content that their subscribers can do so they will continue to pay to play. If you don't have that, and people manage to get through all the available quests within a 3 week period (or considerably shorter in some cases for those with apparently a lot of free time), then you lose those people to something else. In such instances, people are playing a single player RPG that you just happen to be able to play with other people.

So far the progression that I can think of is:

Table Top RPG>Console RPG>MMORPG>LARP???

[Orophin]

If you're not willing to do dungeons for gear, the only alternatives are buying crafted stuff, or doing treasure maps and beastmen dailies for a small pittance of soldiery/mythology.

Every MMORPG has a grind of some kind. It really doesn't matter which game you go to, all of them have some kind of method to keep their hooks in you so you keep playing it.

[Moirear]

If you don't like the long queuing times for a ranged DPS job like BLM, try rolling a melee DPS. Or a healer. Or a tank.

The later I just mentioned different roles above, the quicker those players get into DF parties because there are less of them.


Unfortunately though, I believe what you're demanding is a single-player game. Most of the FF singleplayer games work like what you describe. You can easily complete the entire story without grinding, you only grind for optional sidequests or super-hard optional challenges that tangent the main story. But this is an MMORPG, and all MMORPGs involve grinding if you stick with them on the long run.

In all honesty, there's not a lot of story left in this game by the point you complete the main story, and the extension thereof that has been added with each major patch so far (only a few hours, each). You also don't need to be very geared for the main story content, only for the optional (arguably harder) objectives.

[Niwashi]

If you don't like the long queuing times for a ranged DPS job like BLM, try rolling a melee DPS. Or a healer. Or a tank.

A healer or tank will generally get shorter queues, but the game makes no distinction between ranged DPS and melee DPS. Both are filling the same DPS slots, and both will take just as long in the queue.

[Estellios]

A healer or tank will generally get shorter queues, but the game makes no distinction between ranged DPS and melee DPS. Both are filling the same DPS slots, and both will take just as long in the queue.

This is incorrect regarding queue times. The DF will, if it can, put both a melee and a ranged DPS in your group (or 2 of each in 8 man stuff). As I posted above currently Ranged DPS is in larger supply and generally has much longer wait times than melee DPS and you can test this out yourself just queueing up for dungeons. 2.2 actually changed the "average time" while queued and you get different times shown if you are a melee or a ranged DPS when previously it was averaged between the two.