Feedback from new player about MSQ

[Dawn_FF14]

As a new player myself, I just want to share some of my thoughts, which is probably different from what many people are suggesting.

When I started in January, I was planning to focus on MSQ to reach ShB in a reasonable amount of time - reading every quest text to understand the story lines without rushing through the leveling process. It was when I got into the level 50 quests in AAR, I realized that if I just do these MSQs, I would quit in a week.

So at that point, I changed my approach, and started poking around other non-MSQ things in the game, whatever raises my curiosity. MSQ became the sort of thing to do on the side, "I'll do MSQ or run that MSQ dungeon if I have time today." Granted, it took longer, in calendar days, to finish AAR, but the process was a lot less excruciating for me.

I understand what worked for me may not work for others. I was playing the game for the story (while looking pretty), not for end game, not for gear, and not for collecting things. But, this is just my 2 cents - I need that feeling of "being in control" when playing a game, not the other way around.

[Iscah]

That's the section they're (apparently) making significant changes to for cutting down quest bloat. There are unfortunately a lot of small pointless quests in that section of gameplay, but mixed with some really important character introductions and plot points. Hopefully they will tighten it up a lot and improve the pacing.

There's always a long section of story inbetween the credits of a main game and the start of the next one - two years of episodic storytelling in five or six chapters, basically. The expansions are better on the pacing and interesting story.

Also, a heads-up for some things that are optional at the point where you are but become required later: the three "hard mode" primal trials against Ifrit, Titan and Garuda need to be completed before you can progress to the final chapter of the post-ARR MSQ, and the currently-optional Crystal Tower questline (starting with "Legacy of Allag" in Revenant's Toll) is set to become required as of patch 5.3 but is better done at this point for story continuity.