We should get exp boost in the game.

[Stepjam]

This is the bane of all games, games with a specific niche trying its best to appeal to everyone by cutting its bell-end off appeals to nobody. The Wii taught the gaming media the “casual audience” is a vast ocean compared to the puddles that are categorized as the “gaming audience” as a result many games have lost their luster trying to have the broadest appeal possible. The broader the more people will Play it, and more Money

FF14 is already a high niche game, a MMO, a Final fantasy game, being so closely tied to “anime culture” for some reason, and subscription based models. I say fine tune what we got not throw it all the way for the causal mindset. Simplifying the game to the point of it being a kids game

You got no argument from me. Dead Space 3 was such a disappointment because EA try to take a series from an inherently niche genre, horror, and make it follow AAA action shooter conventions. The worst part was that Dead Space 3 wasn't even a BAD game, it was an okay shooter with cool coop ideas, but it appealed to absolutely nobody as fans of the series wanted another single player horror game which DS3 didn't provide, and the people EA was shooting for probably didn't want to jump into the third installment of a series as their starting point and besides, they had stuff like Battlefield already. So the game flopped hard and EA pulled the plug on the series.

Ugh, don't get me started on EA, they are probably the worst company in the industry right now.

[Razard]

No you misunderstand. I'm talking about FFXIV being shitty if the FFXIV story in particular is supposed to be the main appeal (because it's not that good of a story, compared to those other games you mentioned for example). I'm assuming you immediately stopped reading my post after that first line or I didn't state it obvious enough with the follow up.

Nitpicking and focusing on section outside of context on these forums, imagine my shock. For a community that's interested in story and lore you'd expect them to be more patient and considerate of what posts actually mean instead of straw-manning and nitpicking on impulse at every chance they get. See this practice very often on these forums.

I didn't need to. I see your arguement for the facile, vacuous statement for what it is. "I think the story is overrated so i'm going to call it a shounen anime as if it is a pejorative". and "We don't want to take away what makes this game stands out from it's contemporaries, but we totally do and take one more step into creative homogeny that this genre suffers from".

I prefer my PC to be a Character, not a Toon.

Still waiting on those mythical "lots and lots" of people who are being "locked out of the game" by something that is already being fixed in the next patch by the way. You and TC both.

[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??

[Iscah]

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.

Tightening up a notoriously slow part of the storyline isn't inherently about stopping people from "quitting in disgust". It's still a tedious part for people who *do* like the story and want to stick with it or even willingly replay it - and it's the story that suffers as much as the gameplay in being bogged down with fetchquests and busywork. It's actually a really important part of the game for establishing a number of plots and characters, but it gets lost in a lot of tedium.

I'm not certain of the source but I've heard "13%" is being removed - if that's just a basic list of objectives, then probably they're the sort of things that are going to cut down well more than 13% of the time spent travelling between objectives. All without making the story any less important or mandatory, and pushing you into the Crystal Tower storyline while they're at it.

It's a long jump of logic from there to assuming that they'll have to "concede that story gating is bad for business".

As others have already said: a game does not have to appeal to everyone, and in fact may be more successful by filling a different niche to its competitors and capturing a different group of people with different tastes. If they can appeal to a wide spread of people, great. But that spread doesn't have to include players who would rather quit than play a story-based RPG on their way to hitting MMO endgame.

[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.

[Theodric]

I was never particularly bothered by the fetch quests so much as the near constant back and forth traveling to meet with Minfilia even though we had access to a linkpearl and could have spoken to her through it. I'd agree that a lot of the fetch quests could be pruned, though. They very likely will be as part of the ARR rework.

[RVallant]

This is an amazing troll thread, and I'm stunned so many people are giving the OP the time of the day tbh. Fair play to all of you for explaining things rationally etc, but he genuinely does look to be sticking his head in the sands to your points because of his hatred of story content and desire to play WoW.

Anyway, I agree with some of the other posts in here that there can be *too* much exp given out in this game. If you stick to the MSQ you're fine (if you have road to xx, you're going to be level 40 when you get to level 15 stuff, which is pointless), but I was level 59 when I arrived at Heavensward, which was annoying as enemies melted as I geared up with the cheap level 60 gear. I don't get a chance to use more than one combo on mobs outside of the dungeons, which I think is bad in some ways as the best practice is to get into the routine of your combos outside, so you can hit them perfectly when you do dungeon content. No doubt, I'll be level 65 or something silly by the time I get to the end of HW and I'll be way over-levelled for the next expansion. (Yes, I know you can 'feed' other classes the exp, but meh to that, I want to stick to one class, so that's what I'll do. :P)