Forcing players through MSQ content makes it un fun.

[Ori]

Ok so. Like many. I was not happy to hear that I had to Complete the 2.0 MSQ and do all of the 2.1-2.55 content to access ANY of the HW content.

There is something in the joy that is taken away because I was forced.

And just to be clear. I was not actually forced. Just technically forced.

I would have loved to make a machinist or Dark knight and taken my time learning the class and then working my way through to 3.0 MSQ.

I could have taken my time working on my low level classes. Using them to continue the story. While working on my 50-60 character. Instead I rushed through it so i could join my friends in 3.0 instead of soaking in the story.

And then to make it worse. We have Yoshi over here at the most recent Producer's letter asking everyone to take there time in 3.0.

2.1-2.55 was a fine story. I am very happy I finally played through it. But I would have preferred to under different circumstances.

[Kaiser-Ace]

So you're one of the people who are upset because this game actually has a plot ergo plot requirements to get to certain checkpoint? Man it's REALLY gonna suck come 4.0 when you have to do 2.0 AND 3.0's content to get to 4.0 isn't it. lol

[Temjiu]

So you're one of the people who are upset because this game actually has a plot ergo plot requirements to get to certain checkpoint? Man it's REALLY gonna suck come 4.0 when you have to do 2.0 AND 3.0's content to get to 4.0 isn't it. lol

And, again, your one of the people that completely fail to understand the reason behind the resounding piles of complaints about the issue. I understand your quippy response (this is thread #555,555 about the same issue), don't get me wrong. yeah at times it feels repetitive. but your response shows that you haven't been paying attention to the root of the primary complaint with most players.

No one is complaining about having a story. that's silly...MMO's have stories.
No one is complaining about finishing the stories.
No one is complaining about realistic threshold requirements. note realistic.

Just about everyone is complaining about the severe amount of tedious "go here, fetch X" quests in the MSQ that do absolutely NOTHING but take up time. It's painfully obvious that these quests were made back when there wasn't any actual game progression, and they wanted people to have something to do solo to fill up time. this is simply not needed any more. On top of that, the quest rewards in exp are almost insulting given the severe exp necessities of the new level. There is very little if any real reward for doing those quests. you get no gear that will benefit you from the required instances, and the only things that really benefit (aside from the measly gil rewards) are the materia.

And when you look at the myriad of other MMO's out there that HAVE STORY, that HAVE PLOT, but unlike the archaic and convoluted design of FFXIV, they provide you with ways of getting the story and NOT LOCKING YOU BEHIND DOZENS OF HOURS OF MEANINGLESS QUESTS just to see the content that you have already met the level requirements for. This doesn't even count the actual quests that matter...there are very few. as a matter of fact, most of the "plot" you talk about is advanced in cut scenes, that have NOTHING to do with the actual quests. This is what people are frustrated about. a dozen hours or more of useless quests, and 30 minutes of cutscenes, and the only thing that's really important to the plot is the 30m of cutscenes.

every lvl 50 should be able to walk into the new areas. Every lvl 50 should be able to check out the new sights, the new classes, etc. Every lvl 50 should be able to continue on their crafting journeys...all of this WITHOUT having to do 15+ hours of quests between lvl 50 and....oh yeah, lvl 50.

The story should not be required to unlock areas. there are plenty of MMO's that have much better story and plot then this one, that do not lock the new content. They allow exploration and discovery as much as your capacity at that level allow (a.k.a you won't be soloing any lvl 53 mobs at 50, so lvl 50 players won't necessarily be lounging around in the dravinian forelands). This is solely an SE thing that has caused a ton of strife, and needs to be adjusted.

Example: in SWtOR (one MMO with a better story then this one IMO), when they released Rishi, they had a group of 3-4 instances and some dialogue that were pertinent background for the expansion. Now...the first thing they did right even before the expansion, was make the pertinent stuff (things you had to do), take as little time as possible, and provide meaningful plot advancement...without wasted fluff. they had a ton more stuff you could do to flesh out the stories with the quests, instances, raids, NPC dialogues, etc. but you didn't have to do it. you could immerse yourself in the story, but you didn't have to. the main plot was locked behind a very simple and efficient set of 3-4 runs, with dialogue in-between.

the next thing they did right was they provided a solo option for those instances once the expansion came out. Sure, it was EZ mode. But it gave you a way to see the pertinent and important content on your own time, on your own pace, and it didn't take 15 hours. i actually could get through it in a few hours on a single character. and I still got great story, great plot development. There were exactly ZERO run here and get this quests...ZERO wasted time, yet you got a full story with romance, character development, and even some mystery. it was all there, and it didn't take 15 hours.

[Ori]

No one is complaining about having a story. that's silly...MMO's have stories.
No one is complaining about finishing the stories.
No one is complaining about realistic threshold requirements. note realistic.

Yes. Thank you.

You understand.

And I do apologize for bringing this up again. I brought this up again cause "The greasy wheel gets fixed" type of situation. And to at least provide one more data point for Yoshi and team to look at.

BTW I feel FFXIV has a better story than SWTOR. However I find SWTOR's story glorious and I love it just as much... But hey that's why it is an opinion. And your opinion rocks just as much as mine does. And I am ok that Kaiser-Ace disagrees with me, I just wish he didn't make himself sound so... Obtuse.

Anyways I am not here to bash Square for this choice. I know this has been done to death... Possibly 555,555 times. I just wanted to put another voice in the crowd with my feelings on the matter.

[Makeda]

So you're one of the people who are upset because this game actually has a plot ergo plot requirements to get to certain checkpoint? Man it's REALLY gonna suck come 4.0 when you have to do 2.0 AND 3.0's content to get to 4.0 isn't it. lol

Actually yes it will. Imagine the burden on new players when that day arrives.

Eventually this will strangle the game's ability to grow. Not yet, but it will only take one more expansion for that moment to be there.

The wiki on this game claims it had 4 million players around this time last year. 5 million now (*). WoW by contrast is now down to between 5 and 6 million. This game is actually on track to be WoW's replacement. But that will only occur if it is accessible enough. It is, right now. But it won't be within 1 expansion unless a very quick way for new players to catch up arrives.

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_..._subscriptions

[Dererk]

Actually yes it will. Imagine the burden on new players when that day arrives.

Eventually this will strangle the game's ability to grow. Not yet, but it will only take one more expansion for that moment to be there.

The wiki on this game claims it had 4 million players around this time last year. 5 million now (*). WoW by contrast is now down to between 5 and 6 million. This game is actually on track to be WoW's replacement. But that will only occur if it is accessible enough. It is, right now. But it won't be within 1 expansion unless a very quick way for new players to catch up arrives.[/url]

It was said some where that you won't need Heavensward completed for the next expansion so your argument is invalid.

[MsCroc]

So you're one of the people who are upset because this game actually has a plot ergo plot requirements to get to certain checkpoint? Man it's REALLY gonna suck come 4.0 when you have to do 2.0 AND 3.0's content to get to 4.0 isn't it. lol

I don't have an issue with 3.0's MSQ. But I do with 2.0. Though, only the pre-50 stuff. Everything before 2.1 is such a drag, with 90% of the MSQ being mindnumbing filler. Not exactly this "But FFXIV is all about the story" that people tout. Though, I think 2.1-2.55 is fine. 3.0 is fine. These aren't filler heavy. The 1-49 MSQ is such a chore though and I would love nothing more than to skip it on my alts.

Alas...

[BroodingFicus]

I don't have an issue with 3.0's MSQ. But I do with 2.0. Though, only the pre-50 stuff. Everything before 2.1 is such a drag, with 90% of the MSQ being mindnumbing filler. Not exactly this "But FFXIV is all about the story" that people tout. Though, I think 2.1-2.55 is fine. 3.0 is fine. These aren't filler heavy. The 1-49 MSQ is such a chore though and I would love nothing more than to skip it on my alts.

Alas...

Agreed. Still a heavy advocate of it should be an account bound thing between all characters. I'm on my third character I need to get through everything after 1-49 msq so that I can unlock Ishgard and I'm sorry there is nothing 'story' driven about making cross country treks to go get tea leaves or picking up boxes for people that are standing two feet from them anyway. I agree this gets better as it goes along (by Shiva patch its much better) but the first few patches after the original msq are 60% filler quests that are well below something the warrior of light, after all the stuff he/she has done, should have to deal with. Especially NPC's who send you on 30 menial task quests to 'prove' yourself or to show you are useful. I'm the warrior of light. I don't have anything to freakin' prove and how bout you go fight primal's if you think otherwise.

That said maybe new players won't mind...as much? But I think if they sit and try to go through all those patches like most will, it becomes painfully apparent that half of that nonsense was added to keep people from burning the new content in an hour and not to add anything significant to the story. I'm all for story and I love 3.0 and some of the later patches just before it but all those filler quests should be condensed and made optional. That way people who care about helping a certain annoying secretary do nursemaid level stuff can and the rest of us can go on with the important stuff. You know? Like saving the world?

A good point has also been made several times that while this is perhaps not deal breaking right now, but what happens down the road? With work etc I can get through all the filler stuff between original msq and Ishgard in eh, give or take a week if I have a weekend free to play. If not? Two at least. But now you also have 3.0 which is brilliant but eventually I feel like stuff will have to condense a bit. Maybe by 4.0 the post 50 patches should be reduced down? Cut out all non essential fetch this, run here quests. Not sure. I don't see as much of all this in the HW quests but we have yet to get patches so it remains to be seen if these will be padded as well or more focused like the 3.0 msq has been.

[Kaiser-Ace]

I'll be more sympathetic after the second expansion. As of now it's trivial content, that much I understand it was then too, but with out it getting to the end of 3.0's story would be a few days work at most.

At this rate it's about 2-3 weeks to complete all of 2.0's content and about a week to clear 3.0's story to it's current completion point. No I'm not going to feel sympathetic that you have to spend a few weeks playing Minfilia's Courier Pigeon before you can get to a few new pieces of content that only take a week to finish. Cause if you cleared it in three days then you'd all be griping how there was no story and things were too easy.

[Ori]

No I'm not going to feel sympathetic that you have to spend a few weeks playing Minfilia's Courier Pigeon before you can get to a few new pieces of content that only take a week to finish. Cause if you cleared it in three days then you'd all be griping how there was no story and things were too easy.

You are still not following the logic Temjiu laid out for you. And if you have been on these forums all this time and still do not understand the REAL reason for our opinions on the matter. I doubt I will be able to make you see my side of the story.

Essentially your defense is of a different situation than I am speaking of.

This may be a failure on my part for not explaining myself. So let me just leave it at that.

Clearly I, and others, cannot explain ourselves properly. So stop attacking us. Maybe ask questions to better understand what we do have concerns with.