being new and @ level 50 is killing my interest

[OnpuSegawa]

The entire party was new, so yeah. We were getting one shot by something.

If you deal too much damage to the King, he casts his ultimate attack, which deals damage proportionate to the number of chibi mogs left alive at the time. The intended strategy is to kill as many of them as possible as quickly as possible, because the move is also on a timer. Generally, they are killed in order based on their overall danger to the party. A group of gung-hos spamming AoEs on all of them right as the King spawns can trigger his ultimate, or if all the DPS are going after the King, that will trigger it too.

[FoxyAreku]

Wait, people wipe on thornmarch hard? O.o

Seriously though, while I don't agree with gating the ENTIRE EXPANSION behind a year's worth of story, it is what it is. Just be glad it's not hard and you can grind through it in a day.

[Sylve]

Wait, people wipe on thornmarch hard? O.o

Seriously though, while I don't agree with gating the ENTIRE EXPANSION behind a year's worth of story, it is what it is. Just be glad it's not hard and you can grind through it in a day.

Its only a years worth for existing players because of the 3 monthly wait between patches.
For a brand spanking new player, they'll power through the lot in a couple days at most.
In my opinion, Its better this way. The story is one straight arc from level 1 right up to level 60. For a truly new player who is just playing and enjoying the story, They will simply play through MSQs as they have done from 1 - 49, The only difference is that the MSQ fights get harder without increasing in level.

The real issue is not SE's (good) decision to have people complete all the MSQ of 2.x before moving onto heavensward, its people coming from WoW where there is no continuity between expansions. They probably also take the mindset from there that the destination (Level cap) is all that matters/is fun and all else is mindless time wasting drudgery.

TL;DR, HEavensward will be here for 2 freaking years people, what the hell is your rush?

[Underdog2204]

snip

God fobid people who pay for an MMO expansion would like to play the classes advertised on it. Or be able to have anything to do with it for an extended period of time... -_-

It's more like that is what other MMO's get right but SE got very wrong imo... Some gating is fine, total gating is not.

The rush is trying to get though all the boring (it is very boring... Especially all at once) and get to the point where you are allowed to start having fun again... Kinda makes sense if you ask me, or people just give up before which is not good for anyone.

Games are supposed to be fun, feeling like you are constantly behind all the time and not getting any closer to the end is not the definition of "fun" last I checked. Even the 50 dungeons/primals arn't fun anymore since it's just full of vastly overgeared people.

My bro did the post side quests and it took over 6 hours... He still had 3 more to do before he quit... This is just a side-quest chain he wanted to catch up on ffs.

[Sylve]

-

The post quests are full of lore and background story for the characters/places you visit. If lore is not your brothers thing, he wasn't going to enjoy them regardless. Thing is, the post quests are SIDE quests, as in you do not need to ever touch them at all.
MSQs are the ONLY ones you *need* to do to access Ishgard.
You're falling into the trap of assuming that the only fun to be had is in the very final raid. Theres a metric ton of crap do in XIV that has nothing to do with raiding but is fun. If all you ever want is that latest greatest raid, there are MMOs out there that give you that.
XIV is a story driven game, building up a story and creating a world that makes sense.

Consider this. You buy Heavensward as a new player, select Dark Knight to start with. You then go to Ishgard, despite numerous NPCs saying how its impossible to go there because they dont let outsiders in, helping the Ishgardians via the Job quests etc.
Then you do the Main Story, where you are constantly told you're not allowed into Ishgard. But you can go to Ishgard whenever you like, what are they talking about?

Do you also buy games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Witcher etc, and complain you have to level up to do the harder quests? But you paid for it! Those hard quests were advertised! I should be able to do them right away! They shouldn't be gated behind boring drudgery!

XIV is an RPG as much as it is an MMO. Just deal with it. The next expansion will most likely also have the 3.x MSQ as a requirement.
This extends the life of the game for new players. Each expansion they buy adds tons of story for them to play through before finally reaching the 'endgame' for even more story in the form of the Raid sidequest stories like Coil and now Alexander, hell even the story of Crystal Tower. Other MMOs make you buy old content and then briskly shove you past it all in favor of the latest one.

Thanks to the Roulette, you will always be able to get a group for MSQ content. Failing the DF, you can always make friends with Linkshells and Free Companies.

If you find the MSQ to be nothing but boring drudgery imposed upon you with the carrot of raids at the end, then XIV may not be the right MMORPG for you. Not being mean or anything, but peoples tastes are all different.

[RedShipRaider]

The post quests are scattered with lore and background story for the characters/places you visit while being crammed full of additional pointless fluff who's now outdated purpose was to extend the time players spent logged in between patches or guide them to underused content like Qarn and Hero in a Halfshell.

Fixed that for you.

XIV is a story driven game, building up a story and creating a world that makes sense.

This is true, and I love the game for it's story! It really is the one thing that makes it stand out. But over the years a considerable amount of filler has been injected into that story in order to meet short-sighted game goals that have absolutely nothing to do with the narrative. Requiring new players to go through that BS is killing the game's ability to retain new players, which is extremely vital to the success of an MMO.

[RedShipRaider]

1k characters is a rather restrictive number for any sort of real communication of ideas. -.-

Look at it this way. FFXIV is a better game than GW2 in pretty much every category. It has more content, it has a more cohesive and well written story, it has better thought out battle mechanics that only had to be thrown out and reimplemented once rather than repeatedly. Yet despite this GW2 has been much more successful than FF14, having sold more copies, retaining more players, and making more profit for NCSoft than FF14 can ever really hope to considering the double-development money pit that they wound up in. A major reason for this is because FF14 has never really been able to retain players, between the original subpar game and now these barriers to entry that are full of as much pointless time wasting fluff as they are good story content. The majority of new people come, they play until they get hung up on filler, and then they let their subscription lapse.

[Aeyis]

XIV is an RPG as much as it is an MMO. Just deal with it.

There isnt much rpg in XIV. I do agree with bringing this argument up every now and then tho, as it reminds me I need to replay some real rpgs again sometimes. (neverwinter, DA, Mass effect, Kotor, Spellforce, etc)

Lol too funny, sorry man life is unfair, can't have everything handed to you. Put it this way, I'm 30 and want to learn violin. I try and it's hard as shit, but my neighbour who is 30 plays like a total pro because he's been playing since he was 5 years old. Does that mean that I should get some kind of magical bonus because he has 25 years on me and I'm new?

Well if you were to enlist your neighbours aid, im sure you would learn much faster. One might argue that qualifies as some kind of magical bonus. Why, if you were (are) at very good terms with your neighbour, that might even happen naturally.

Unfortunately in mmos these days we are not often on good (or any) terms with our neightbours.

[416to305]

Well if you were to enlist your neighbours aid, im sure you would learn much faster. One might argue that qualifies as some kind of magical bonus. Why, if you were (are) at very good terms with your neighbour, that might even happen naturally..

But that's exactly what I said. My friend who is still at 50 I help out by buying him the MNK gear in Ishgard which is ilvl 115 and better than the gear you get with tomes of poetics. Each item is like 15,000-25,000 gil so super cheap. So anyone who is in a FC can easily ask anyone to do the same since the items are tradable. That way you can blow through any of the primals or dungeons required to complete the MSQs in ARR without having to run raids and dungeons over and over to collect gear trying to up your ilvl a bit. I remember when getting Ifrit's weapon was exciting, now it's useless. So just this alone is pretty much the same as giving a huge bonus. We were surprised you could even do that. Maybe the OP doesn't realize just how long it took to get this same quality gear before by using tomes, where you'd do daily roulette and get like 100 of them or do Titan HM and get like 15, when most pieces like body needed 875 of them to buy.

My point is when I hit 50, my gear was like ilvl 50 or less. I had to do Ifrit and others over and over collecting tomes to get better gear, then Syrcus Tower for Oil/Sands of Time to upgrade that, then finally WoD when I was geared enough, work on the relic weapon etc, which took months alone but you had to do it since some of the required dungeons or primals needed ilvl 90 as a minimum. Now you can simply buy on the market board or get a friend to buy you gear in Ishgard and you're instantly ilvl 115. If that's not a HUGE bonus right there then I'm sorry but I don't know what more someone else wants.

[Aeyis]

You actually require far less help then that. It should be possible to run all of the MSQ duties in an undersized group with some 60s. Done Garuda HM in duo as WHM/Ninja (not super geared, like 170~), so with 3 60's it shouldnt be too hard to do all the duties that dont hard require 8~ people.

I think people in this game are too used to just going DF as ive rarely seen Undersized party been brought up as counterargument to trouble finding groups/long waiting time in queue.