PangTong has the right of it.

There's nothing fun about hitting one button over and over. There's little thought and little meaning behind it. Its simply 'I need to push this so it isn't super slow.' Whereas by 50 you have a full set to work with that you know you have to use in an intelligent manner not only to make things go quicker, but in many cases to survive.

The dreaded MSQ is why some friends of mine will not play this game. They admit the story is good. They really do. But they want to experience the story on their own terms. Skipping it doesn't do that. Skipping means they skip it. They don't get to play it. And I agree. Content should not be story locked, it should be level locked (or in some cases item level locked). In their words, they just want to play the game, and then do the MSQ when no one else is around.

I agree with this sentiment. I heavily believe MSQ should be optional. The game itself is great. It has some of the best dungeons in the industry. As well as some of the best class design. And before anyone goes on about how the story is the majority of the game. Please don't bother. I completed the ShB MSQ BEFORE the expansion was released. During early access I got to 80 and completed the final trial against Hades. That took literally 2 days. I've been playing for 2 weeks after that. This means MSQ is so far, less than 10% of my time spent playing this game. But yet it gated the over 90% of content I am enjoying right now.

That doesn't make much sense to me.

I highly believe FFXIV could be the MMO to rule them all if they make MSQ optional, and make as PangTong said, make the classes fun right out of the gate. We're talking giving them their earliest rotation earlier. They don't need a full 80, 70, 60, or even 50 kit. Like I suggested, for BLM you would have access to Fire, Blizzard, Lightning, and Transpose. Hell that's what Blackmages started with in every other FF game thus far at level 1. That's not too crazy.