New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[DumdogsWorld]

Honey, I'm the one that decides if I play this game or not-- not you. The same goes for any player that decides they aren't interested in the crappy fedexing through six phases to get to the present day.

If Square feels so passionately that everyone needs to do every quest, then they can make them worth doing. Until then, those players are well within their right to call a crappy series of quests a crappy series of quests.

If you want cutscenes, replace with youtube.

Nobody is stopping you from buying a skip potion.

[Awha]

If you consider playing through the plot of this game to be that much of a chore, then I really think this game just isn't for you as I stated above. Either buy a skip potion or play one of the other dozen MMOs that actually are endgame focused.

Though I do think that all the filler pre-heavensward should be trimmed down quite a lot, and it is a shame that all the forum crying over the years has caused so many nerfs, there's not much to be done about it, and if you jumped straight over heavensward or stormblood you'd miss a ton of character introductions and context so it would actually hurt the experience for people who care about the plot and would hurt what the developers want the player to experience.

You really aren't missing much by having to play through the story anyway, everything important that content offers like the classes and races will be available without having to actually be at that level just like before, why people want to skip over everything so they can sit at max with nothing to do like I have been for months is beyond me.

If I may ask how does having the MSQ be optional impact you negatively?

[FoxyAreku]

Honey, I'm the one that decides if I play this game or not-- not you. The same goes for any player that decides they aren't interested in the crappy fedexing through six phases to get to the present day.

If Square feels so passionately that everyone needs to do every quest, then they can make them worth doing. Until then, those players are well within their right to call a crappy series of quests a crappy series of quests.

If you want cutscenes, replace with youtube.

You get offended really easily if you took what I said as 'you shouldn't play this game', "Honey".

Work on that fragile ego first off, second off I was simply proposing that if you don't enjoy the main draw of the entire game, then it may simply not be for you. I wouldn't recommend Sekiro to someone that doesn't like challenging games, just as I wouldn't recommend FFXIV to someone who doesn't want a story driven experience. I'd recommend them Guild Wars or WoW instead, as they do the endgame focus quite a bit better. If you approach this game like those then you're going to be out of stuff to do within a week and be severely disappointed. I speak from experience, here. But, if you REALLY need to reach endgame ASAP, whether it be because playing with friends in the whole 4 raid fights we get every half a year or whatever is your only reason for playing, then the skip potion option IS ALREADY available to you, and there is nothing wrong with using that.

That aside, I actually don't completely disagree with you as I also stated in my previous post. There is a LOT of filler that needs a trim along the course of the plot, and I would be 100% for undoing needless nerfs like to Steps of Faith or other fights so they are more engaging, but I don't believe that will ever happen since this community tends to whine if anything requires more than two button presses to complete.

If I may ask how does having the MSQ be optional impact you negatively?

It doesn't, nor did I ever say it did, you may need to work on your reading comprehension if you thought I was saying it effected me. I'm just in favor of people enjoying their experience with the game. If the game isn't for you, then it's not for you, but there are plenty of games that are!

[SerLuke]

Anti MSQ people: the story in this game SUCKS I skip all the cut scenes
Final Fantasy fans: how do you know it sucks if you skip the cut scenes?
Anti MSQ people: it makes it too hard for newbies to get into the game!
Final Fantasy fans: how does that make the MSQ suck?
Anti MSQ people: these guys are so unreasonable I give up!

[Mavrias]

Anti MSQ people: the story in this game SUCKS I skip all the cut scenes
Final Fantasy fans: how do you know it sucks if you skip the cut scenes?
Anti MSQ people: it makes it too hard for newbies to get into the game!
Final Fantasy fans: how does that make the MSQ suck?
Anti MSQ people: these guys are so unreasonable I give up!

the arr story up until the prelude to heavensward stuff sucks. particularly 2.1 to about 2.4. a lot of running around doing unnecessary delivery quests to the point where even NPCs crack jokes about it. i got my fiance into the game recently and all through 2.x i had to tell them that everything gets better in heavensward simply because that bit of the story is just so... tedious. it absolutely turns new players off.

its a bit disingenuous to dismiss everyones issues with the msq as unreasonable

[SerLuke]

If I may ask how does having the MSQ be optional impact you negatively?

You mean besides changing the entire structure of the game which is heavily story based which people would know if they weren’t skipping cut scenes?

[Skivvy]

You mean besides changing the entire structure of the game which is heavily story based which people would know if they weren’t skipping cut scenes?

XI didn't force you to do the full MSQ. As others pointed out, those story lines didn't overlap much, but there are a lot of clever people working at SE. I'm sure they could strike a good balance with not forcing 100% completion while also keeping the story congruent.

[SilverObi]

XI didn't force you to do the full MSQ. As others pointed out, those story lines didn't overlap much, but there are a lot of clever people working at SE. I'm sure they could strike a good balance with not forcing 100% completion while also keeping the story congruent.

XI indeed didn't force you to do each storyline sequentially and could stand on their own as individually strong narratives, but they overlapped constantly. They gave context and meaning to each other with the possible exception of ToAU but even that tied into the overarching world with WotG and later RoV. But it also was a different style of story for the player since they were mostly observers or constantly falling into these massive events where the star NPC was the actual hero (this of course changed in RoV). XIV is going for a continuous narrative and that's not a bad thing, it's just different expectations people have for the mmorpg genre.

[Ramesses]

XI didn't force you to do the full MSQ. As others pointed out, those story lines didn't overlap much, but there are a lot of clever people working at SE. I'm sure they could strike a good balance with not forcing 100% completion while also keeping the story congruent.

*(Begins making some comparisons and makes some findings)*

Interesting...

[SerLuke]

XI didn't force you to do the full MSQ. As others pointed out, those story lines didn't overlap much, but there are a lot of clever people working at SE. I'm sure they could strike a good balance for their modern game.

As I stated in a previous post that is one reason why I prefer XIV’s story over XI’s XIV feels like one continuous adventure where XI branched off in different directions with each expansion I love XIV because of the way it does MSQ and how it ties into everything and I don’t want that to change.