We should get exp boost in the game.

[Melichoir]

I get what you're saying and it sounds like good arguments and maybe you're right. I'm not entirely convinced that the whole game's mentality would change like that if it's an option that is off on default. You give the example of WoW, but that's just how WoW is and always has been, that's what their community is like and from my experience the WoW ingame story isn't as engaging as FFXIV's, the fact that you're just a random hero and pawn of the the important characters being a big factor probably. So it makes more sense to skip all that basically, however that's not how I played WoW, I actually halted my leveling just so I could still experience story from certain areas better, but I realize I'm probably in the minority for doing that. I'm not convinced the player mindset in FFXIV would change as much as is speculated cause this story focused mindset seems prevalent for FF community in general.

You know if you think about it, there may be other ways to battle this path of least resistance appeal problem. Instead of having the instance unlocking as a toggle, they could implement a system in which you'd have to farm from some kind of tokens by grinding dungeons or do other combat content, so you'd have to put effort before being allowed to skip MSQ. And to unlock content you'd have to then go to a specific person with the tokens you've earnt, who will then unlock X content for you. Make the grinding for tokens take longer than rushing and skipping trough MSQ manually perhaps.

I dont think the mentality would switch over night. Itd probbaly take an xpac for it to swap, but it would be inevitable and once it happens, theres no going back. I just cant see it not happening if that model gets placed. I think a lot of players default to the path of least resistance. I think that it actually got worse in WoW when you no longer had to go to dungeons and the like, but just had to get to a certain level and then queue from the cities.

As for tokens, I dunno. That could work. Maybe Mini Jump potions or something. Youd have to play through MSQ up to maybe, I dunno, MSQ lvl 30 quest or something. Then you can get a chapter select function, where you can skip the next chapter of MSQ, get access to the dungeons but youll still be at lvl 30. And lets say theres only so many times you can do this in a period of time. Lets say you can skip 1 chapter every 2 days or something. So you cant just skip the MSQ entirely, and youre forced into doing something in the mean time to get experience and levels (Fate grinding, hunts, logs, etc). If you get to the next chapter and youre of level, then you can resume MSQ there. If you skip MSQ though, you lose that experience from the quests. You can replay it with the NG+ later if you want, but you forfeit the experience, gil, and items in doing so. It's a bit punishing in one light, but youre goal is "get to end game" it wont be that big a set back.

There are ways they could potentially make it work, but the goal I think to off set the 'WoW effect' would be incentivize MSQ as the best path forward, and give options for people who simply dont care for it.

[GeminiReed]

The story grind is a problem that Square recognizes. We know this because they said so and are taking action with 5.3 to tighten up some of the ARR missions because too many people were quitting in disgust. Think about that. They are using resources to adjust the story because they are losing enough customers that it make business sense to try to fix a retention problem.

My hope is that they're being conservative because if they are not it's only going to shift the point where customers give up. If successful this could just be the first of several cleanups or if not they may finally concede that story gating is bad for business.

FF has a critical mass of fans that carried XIV through a dark patch. Yes the story does continue to attract that niche but IMO it is not why XIV has been successful. Instead I think XIV's success is mostly due to its stability and predictability. This is shockingly rare in the industry.

Once more, nobody is advocating getting rid of the story or that they should stop any sort of story focus. What people want is for Square to decouple the story from group activity access. Will it kill the game if they don't? Of course not. Will they be as successful as they can be? No and the danger is they will fall to niche status if some other MMO figures out that stability and a predictable content pipeline are the road to success.

[kaynide]

...

IMO all they need to do is remove any quest that adds nothing to the main story. Chores at low level, all good. Especially if the story is kinda funny or fleshing out starter towns.

But once the story is rolling, cut the “go out and kill 3 morbols ‘cause they annoy the town and can’t have that!” Make em side quests.

That and for the love of Minfilia use the linkpearls that exist in game to communicate instead of “go halfway across the world to talk to Alphinaud, then report back to walking sands..then go talk to Y’shtola, then come back..”. Seriously, can’t we scions just do a zoom meeting??

[Morningstar1337]

IMO all they need to do is remove any quest that adds nothing to the main story. Chores at low level, all good. Especially if the story is kinda funny or fleshing out starter towns.

But once the story is rolling, cut the “go out and kill 3 morbols ‘cause they annoy the town and can’t have that!” Make em side quests.

That and for the love of Minfilia use the linkpearls that exist in game to communicate instead of “go halfway across the world to talk to Alphinaud, then report back to walking sands..then go talk to Y’shtola, then come back..”. Seriously, can’t we scions just do a zoom meeting??

We're taking about the MSQ right, because I feel like most the fetch quests were more related to side-quests and thus mostly optional.

As for the linkpearl thing, annoying as that is, I don't see that being fixed so easily, especially since the reason for these roundabouts is that the linkpearls can and HAVE been wiretapped. Establish that plotpoint earlier than the godsdammned praetorium (you know the dungeon where people either skipped or alt-tabed the cutscenes depending on what year they played), and the players'd be a little more understanding.

[Iscah]

We're taking about the MSQ right, because I feel like most the fetch quests were more related to side-quests and thus mostly optional.

Nah, there's a lot of fetch quests throughout the MSQ. I went through it on an alt not long ago. All through ARR and post-ARR, there are a lot of fetch quests, "kill three squirrels before we can progress" quests, picking up random objects, fetching parcels from halfway across the country...

[Stepjam]

We're taking about the MSQ right, because I feel like most the fetch quests were more related to side-quests and thus mostly optional.

There were a fair amount of fetch quest busy work type stuff in ARR, a lot of it being in the patches. In base ARR, there was everything around the lead up to the Titan fight. It was justified narratively but it was still tedious as hell. And then in the patches, there were multiple quests that felt like busy work. The one that stuck with me the most was a quest that was basically just "Hand out tea to the scions one by one". Then theres all the shenanigans you gotta do with Tataru, like when she decides to be a miner, you go out and protect her from some morbols I think, and then she decides "Nah, mining isn't for me". And thus ends that subplot.

[Morningstar1337]

There were a fair amount of fetch quest busy work type stuff in ARR, a lot of it being in the patches. In base ARR, there was everything around the lead up to the Titan fight. It was justified narratively but it was still tedious as hell. And then in the patches, there were multiple quests that felt like busy work. The one that stuck with me the most was a quest that was basically just "Hand out tea to the scions one by one". Then theres all the shenanigans you gotta do with Tataru, like when she decides to be a miner, you go out and protect her from some morbols I think, and then she decides "Nah, mining isn't for me". And thus ends that subplot.

Ah yes it'd been a while since I done that.

[kaynide]

...

I am currently doing 2.x quests in Mor Dhona and I. Literally just had to kill 3 morbols.

[Reap00]

I am currently doing 2.x quests in Mor Dhona and I. Literally just had to kill 3 morbols.

You had to kill monsters in an mmo?! Get a refund. That is truly ridiculous.

[SamRF]

I am currently doing 2.x quests in Mor Dhona and I. Literally just had to kill 3 morbols.

Honestly, I think adding more combat to MSQ would make them feel less of a slog to many people. Same goes for me actually, I enjoy the MSQ for it's story but the combat and reading discrepancy is too great imo, to the point it feels like you're playing a graphic novel instead of a game at times and make me long for any combat (resulting in me doing random fates and dungeons without any goal, outleveling even more, fine by me but don't see lots of of people engage in goalless gameplay). The fact that you level so quickly is probably a big contributor to this problem, but even then, sidequests usually have very little combat as well.

And as I've mentioned before, the fact that you're stuck with gutted actions/rotation for so long certainly doesn't help imo.