Cutscenes from a new player's perspective:

[Nabril]

I just did the Castrum... That was brutal!

I don't think that this many cutscenes adds too the whole experience of a dungeon. The whole thing is combat. That's what we're here to do. We're not here to have word balloons that last long enough to be read multiple times each by all by the average reader.

Then, just because one person in the party walks 20 steps away from where we were when the last cutscene happed, we're suddenly thrown into another one? Why? There's nothing in that that adds anything to the experience of a dungeon....

And this goes on and on like this throughout the entire dungeon. It served no purpose. I want to get into my rotation and then- BOOM!!! another 45 second cutscene that I can't skip!

Then we progress a bit more and then- yup! just had another cutscene! Tring to get back into the flow of running, fighting, and doing my rotation is a lost cause

Adding in this many cutscenes was a mistake. Making them unskippable was even more so.

[Nestama]

And they never did again.

[Coratanni]

More threads yay.

[ElHeggunte]

I mean I can appreciate it as a storytelling medium as the Final Fantasy series has always been mostly story-driven. It's supposed to make you feel more included in the story because the scenes are happening in "real time" alongside the action. SE was just sorely mistaken in thinking that this kind of storytelling lends itself well to a multiplayer experience, especially when the game encourages you to run content far in excess of just once. You just wind up creating a mess where vets don't want to wait and new players don't want to be left behind. Fortunately, SE learned their lesson and has never again placed lengthy cutscenes into the middle of an active instance (boss intros notwithstanding).

[KisaiTenshi]

The problem, really, is that they decided to make these "cinematic" (since they were the end-game point at that point in time.)

There's unfortunately no good way to deal with it now, because you don't want to damage it and deny future players the ability to play it as it was intended, but don't want to force players to watch the cutscenes and then have new players unable to progress past that point. About all they could do now is make it optionally solo (like the end of 3.x) and re-scale the combat difficulty so that it actually presents a challenge while having 7 computer player combatants that are at least as smart as the current command mission npc's (which is, not smart enough to not stand in bad, but smart enough to turn the boss away from the party.) Making "multiplayer" content into solo content is not really a good solution, though it does present a solution to the "I want to run something for experience" players who would otherwise be unable to find players due to queuing as DPS.

In another game, they had to "streamline" portions of the MSQ because players would never, ever, help. (No roulettes), so you know what they did? They made every story quest solo. It, butchered the MSQ of that game. This is why it's important that people record their MMO games, because sometimes the developers opts nerf, change, or delete content under the misguided notion that it's not fun, rather than maybe create AI players to auto-fill missing multi-player slots in the party.

[EdwinLi]

It was the developers belief that people would be tolerant enough to allow new players watch these cutscenes. However, that did not turn out as planned so they stopped doing that.

The concept was intereting but not get executed properly due to not taking into consideration different people's nature of wanting to rush through old content.

[BillyKaplan]

not taking into consideration different people's nature of wanting to rush through old content.

This statement completely ignores the fact that this thread was made by a person to whom this is not old content and still they disagree with this design decision. Then on top of the cutscenes, making them unskippable - the intended demographic for this change doesn't 100% agree with it, so blaming it on veterans wanting to power through old content is really off the mark.
Something so cutscene heavy should not have been placed in a game like this period, all the more so when you consider the MMO aspect of it. There's a reason why moving forward, this sort of thing is 1. solo instances where you have several NPCs with you, 2. all the dialog is brought up in floating text bubbles, they don't stop it all to hit you up with ultimately redundant cinematics that could've just as easily been presented in other ways.

[CainCrimson]

...blaming it on veterans wanting to power through old content is really off the mark.

The majority of complaints about not wanting to wait for cutscenes to be read/experienced come from players that have already seen them, or "veteren" players. It's a known trend and it's correct more often than not. Despite this thread being created by a new player.

That being said, this type of dialog box heavy content inside of a dungeon was not a smart move for an MMORPG and its easy to see how it would erk any player trying to simply move on to the next completion. New and old players alike.

I really don't think there is a safe middle ground either, not when mixing so many different playstyle preferences. Then again even if they did find some impossible universal solution we'd probly find a way to screw it up anyway so...

[BillyKaplan]

I really don't think there is a safe middle ground either, not when mixing so many different playstyle preferences. Then again even if they did find some impossible universal solution we'd probly find a way to screw it up anyway so...

Make it a solo instance. It solves basically every single problem regarding this. I understand why they didn't do it at the time, but they have the technology to do it today. The problem is it involves investing a certain amount of time on old content, a concept they seem allergic to.

[Llus]

The majority of complaints about not wanting to wait for cutscenes to be read/experienced come from players that have already seen them, or "veteren" players. It's a known trend and it's correct more often than not. Despite this thread being created by a new player.

That being said, this type of dialog box heavy content inside of a dungeon was not a smart move for an MMORPG and its easy to see how it would erk any player trying to simply move on to the next completion. New and old players alike.

I really don't think there is a safe middle ground either, not when mixing so many different playstyle preferences. Then again even if they did find some impossible universal solution we'd probly find a way to screw it up anyway so...

When I was a new player I skipped all the cut-scenes I was allowed to because it was a waste of time. I never enjoyed the "story-telling" cut-scenes of ANY game. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd put on a movie; I want to play a game. Some people like cut-scenes in their video games, some people don't. For those that DO like cut-scenes; there's a journal in the inn that lets you re-watch them. For those that want to experience cut-scenes as they were intended there's party finder. I remember taking people in my FC through castrum so they could watch the cut-scenes w/o feeling pressured to skip 'em. I found it boring AF, but was willing to help out. That was MY decision to help out and spend my time twiddling my thumbs while people watched the cut-scenes. It was also MY decision to skip the cut-scenes when I first ran it and any time afterward. SE has take away both new players and veteran player's choice to accommodate a vocal minority who are unwilling to either get their FC friends to help out, use party finder to get a group to help them out or simply skip the cut-scenes and watch them later. Well; to some extent veterans do have a choice: to not run that content. By making the above comment, you're making a lot of assumptions about those that would rather skip cut-scenes completely whether they've seen them or not; since those that made that choice as a new player are generally not vocal because they had that choice to skip the cut-scenes. The OP is not alone and probably won't be the last that complains about being forced to watch cut-scenes when they just want to play.

To avoid making assumptions, here's a poll: https://www.strawpoll.me/15739249