Square you need to streamline the main story

[Hamada]

Now multiply that by 100 quests.

Have you done the MSQ recently? I don't think you realize how much of this crap there is.

people forget, I had no idea how dreadful 50 stuff was till I did it again on ama, having a new player do it all at once? gross, at 50 it made more sense, but game was at 50 for too long giving you all this buildup.

[delukard7]

Convincing the people that wrote it in the first place that the story they put time and creativity into is "bad" and needs to be shortened?

Let me know how that goes for you.

sure i´ll let you know!
besides if you consider time wasted using the forums to convince the developers of one point, then i wonder what can i say about convincing another forum member of that same point, when that member has no power over the game!
I appreciate the time you take in posting, i really do. but

[RokkuEkkusu]

As far as the story quests go, those 2.1 to 2.5 quests award me free gil, experience, and gear for me. I can't go wrong with those.

But if it were up to me, I'd keep Qarn, and also hard modes of Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, Mog, Levi, Ramuh, and Shiva mandatory while cutting most of the quests from 2.1 to 2.2 down to just a few. I'd say the most important parts of the story are from 2.3 and on.

[Felis]

Instead of shorten the story, how about merging some quests?.
As an example, "start quest a -> talk to person A,B and C to end quest a -> start quest b -> bring item x to person G to end quest b" can be changed to "start quest a -> talk to person A,B and C -> bring item x to person G to end quest a"

a reduction of the amount of quests by 50%

[Bourne_Endeavor]

2.1 was made to introduce F'lhaminn and give character development to Minfilia and a bit to Thancred, provide a believable set-up for the Scions moving to a new location and the establishment of a hub area for players, and reintroduce the Moogle Primal to the game as a foundation for future important developments regarding how primals are formed (namely that they aren't pre-existing deities returning to form but can be created wholesale out of an idea or myth).

It also arguably served as a sort of soft reset on the action, as the story had just come through a climax with Ultima Weapon, and always trying to one up the action, intensity, and stakes with each subsequent patch simply leads to bad story telling.

That is the real reason behind it.

You can flesh out Minfilia without having twenty quests where we essentially pick flowers for her mother. You're placing far too great a significance on ultimately meaningless fluff. I mean, we have the Company of Heroes or Aspected Aether quest lines where NPCs flatout mock us for having wasted so much time accomplishing nothing. It's clumsy storytelling and a big reason Heavensward is widely considered to have much better pacing.

[Eimian_Eda]

As someone who recently got 2 players to return (quit before 50) and 3 new players to join...
Yeah, the MSQ is a drag for them. Just keep telling them HW is "a bit better with that".

[Kleeya]

Seems like i can recommend Dragon Nest to some persons out here. It has everything you want since it was butchered to fit the "i want to go to the last raid asap" mentality. Tons of quests were removed, as well as the background of numerous npcs who became nobodys you dont care about. No gating at all, too much xp, which make you not caring for the few remaining quests since you overlevel the donjons way too much. Once you get to the max lvl you begin to mindlessly bash things only to get drops, you dont even have the slightest idea why you are here or who the mobs you are killing are, because quests are so bothersome, why would people want to waste time reading some background storys ?

Irony aside, i dont find quests like those related to refugees useless. Since the time i did hear of where they came from and what they have gone through, it makes me want to see their homeland so much more. It would be so underwhelming in the next extension to go in the new maps only to tell you "Mmmmm so, where i am again ? Doma, errrrr what's that ? I didn't read anything about it before. Oh wait, isn't it related to some refugees ? I dont remember, some npc took care of them for me, because it was not worth my time to do that... Why am i even here ?".

For those who have some sort of burn-out trying to go through the quests too quickly, i think you are taking the game the wrong way. Unlike some other mmos with too few content there is tons of alternate things to do in FF14 when you are bored with something. When i am fed up with the main quests story line i switch to something else a while, and go back to the quests when i feel like it. Which is why i am still on the game while the first guy i added to my friendlist, who was into the "mmo are beginning at the max lvl" mentality and quickly became way ahead of me, quit a long time ago. When i see now the amount of quests and cut scenes there is, i swear that this guy didn't read and didn't watch anything, othwerwise he couldn't have become 60 so quickly. He ended up being burn-out by wanting to go way too fast, in a game that isn't designed for that.

[MomomiMomi]

For those who have some sort of burn-out trying to go through the quests too quickly, i think you are taking the game the wrong way.

It's different, not wrong. Also, just because you've been here longer than others doesn't mean your experience is better than the one they had in a shorter amount of time.

[SaitoHikari]

Seems like i can recommend Dragon Nest to some persons out here. It has everything you want since it was butchered to fit the "i want to go to the last raid asap" mentality. Tons of quests were removed, as well as the background of numerous npcs who became nobodys you dont care about. No gating at all, too much xp, which make you not caring for the few remaining quests since you overlevel the donjons way too much. Once you get to the max lvl you begin to mindlessly bash things only to get drops, you dont even have the slightest idea why you are here or who the mobs you are killing are, because quests are so bothersome, why would people want to waste time reading some background storys ?

Hmm, lots of former Dragon Nest players showing up on these forums lately. This kind of makes me glad, considering what that game has turned into. And I gotta say, this quote isn't an exaggeration, so much was removed from the game to funnel people towards level cap content, including the removal of all earlier level party content since the devs never bothered to implement a level sync mechanic and figured nobody ever ran them anymore because they weren't important for leveling.

The Lv. 50 MSQ still should be streamlined to an extent. Just redesign them to be far less fetchy somehow. People seem to have issues with the Moogle King/Ramuh/Leviathan phase most of all (there's a lot of random filler in between those quests, like the cleanup of Mor Dhona that includes running Sunken Temple of Qarn for some reason), and all the grievances usually level out by the Snowcloak/Shiva phase anyway.

I think this would be less of a problem if there weren't jobs gated behind the MSQ advancing into Heavensward too. I had a friend from the same previous game that began playing FFXIV about 3 months ago, and he blew through the entire Lv. 50 MSQ phase in one night so he could become a Dark Knight ASAP, he didn't want to play anything else longer than necessary. Upon hitting Lv. 60, he basically quit almost immediately due to sheer burnout, and I don't believe he's to return until Stormblood. All of the friends he brought over had roughly the same thing happen to them. The devs appear to have at least learned their lesson in this category though, gating Red Mage and Samurai behind the Praetorium instead of the Lv. 50 MSQ slog -and- having them both Lv. 50 instead of Lv. 30 so they can just pick up the jobs and proceed, but something similar should really happen with Astrologian/Dark Knight/Machinist too (who at this point are unlocked WAY later and start 20 levels behind for some reason).

[Naunet]

I still really wish they would just make the MSQ NOT required for everything... let people play through the quests if they want, when they want. Having to do it over... and over... and over.. and over again for alts is just... well, it kills the motivation.

Sounds like you over leveled, as many seem to complain about the opposite that they have to level up in order to continue with quests.

I can't imagine how this would be possible. My main was 60 well before finishing Dravania. This alt is 56 - 56 - and I literally JUST started the HW quests.

It's annoying as heck to be funneled through the exact same tedious MSQ every single time. If I want to level by dungeons, let me level by dungeons. If I want to level by doing a hodgepodge of quests, moving on when overleveled, then let me do that. If I want to level with PotD, then let me level with PotD. If I want to level by doing every MSQ quest, then that should be an option.