Massively OP: What content in Final Fantasy XIV is optional?

[Jennah]

Other than the original Coils of Bahamut, SE has done a great job of making anything that requires a party finder to be optional for getting the story.
Or even getting the vast majority of rewards - wait a patch or two and the item level catches up; and you're only out a few pieces of glamour and titles if you don't do the more intense stuff.

... and whoever wrote that article is kind of insane for complaining about CT being required.

[Risvertasashi]

...a lot of these comments are even lower quality than normal for the OF.

But on topic. I think it may have been a bigger deal if CT was required when it was current. Now? It's jokingly trivial. Maybe following perfect ideals it wouldn't be required, but the lore team - who does an above and beyond job with FFXIV and it's one of the major reasons I play - wanted to use the story, develop a certain character further, etc. To do this, to make any sense, the content has to be required.

Some might not care about the lore but I very much appreciate their attention to detail and continuity. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's better than any MMO I can think of and a lot of non-MMOs too.

When the price is 'you have to do some very easy - trivially easy - old content that used to be entirely optional' and we get a very good story in return, I'm OK with it.

[Puremallace]

So fun little history lesson for those who may not know but wayyy back when in the Burning Crusade in WoW you used to have to get keys that would let you into certain dungeons/raids. You would go through a questline to learn about the history of the dungeon or raid to unlock it.

When I leveled my Paladin from 1-80 there were probably 15 dungeons and multiple game features like pvp, hunt logs, sight seeing logs....hell even Challenge logs that I had never unlocked. In fact I skipped literally every single side quest in Mordana that unlocks quite a bit of content in FF14 and was at end game.

FF14 could maybe make an easier log once you hit max level sort of like a check list but I hate hate hate the WoW model in quite a lot of MMO's that just unlock everything automatically at end game. You have no connection with the story at all or what is going on.

Noone finds it strange that TOO THIS DAY when you do a roulette you get a guy watching the cutscenes for the first time in a hard mode? That is because that person was wondering around and finally clicked on some of these quest sitting around and realized there were entire dungeons, raids and trials you were never required to do.

[Jojoya]

Interesting article over at Massively OP that takes a look at content that is technically optional, but is absolutely required to progress. Such as raids and old content.

Curious to know what the community's thoughts on this are.

What is optional depends on what your personal goals are. The more goals you set for yourself, the more things may become mandatory.

Technically, the only thing mandatory is to download and install the game. If someone wants to spend all their time playing with the character creator but never actually create the character and start the MSQ, they can do that.

I've got 2 alts that have never touched a raid outside of Crystal Tower before completing the 5.2 MSQ and they've only done Crystal Tower since then as it genuinely will be mandatory for MSQ progression in 5.3. They have average ilvls over 460. Raids (outside of Crystal Tower beginning in 5.3) are clearly not mandatory.

... and whoever wrote that article is kind of insane for complaining about CT being required.

It wasn't required before. You could understand what was going on in Shadowbringers well enough without it (though having done it gave a little more background depth to the story). Crystal Tower could have remained unexplored in the WoL's contemporary time, with the visit to the First and the explanation of its presence becoming the motivation to explore it later at some unspecified future date.

Why is it going to be required now? Is future MSQ lore going to be dependent on knowing what happened in the Crystal Tower raids, or is it only that Crystal Tower may be getting inserted into the MSQ to replace some of the content being removed?

[ItMe]

Noone finds it strange that TOO THIS DAY when you do a roulette you get a guy watching the cutscenes for the first time in a hard mode? That is because that person was wondering around and finally clicked on some of these quest sitting around and realized there were entire dungeons, raids and trials you were never required to do.

In my experience those people also have a fair chance of being sprouts.

[Enla]

It wasn't required before. You could understand what was going on in Shadowbringers well enough without it (though having done it gave a little more background depth to the story). Crystal Tower could have remained unexplored in the WoL's contemporary time, with the visit to the First and the explanation of its presence becoming the motivation to explore it later at some unspecified future date.

Why is it going to be required now? Is future MSQ lore going to be dependent on knowing what happened in the Crystal Tower raids, or is it only that Crystal Tower may be getting inserted into the MSQ to replace some of the content being removed?

My guess is that they're waking G'raha Tia up on the Source and requiring the raid simply makes their job of story writing a lot easier without needing to handwave the many months it took for the Crystal Exarch to start hero worshiping the WoL in the non-CT timeline. It's not really there to replace anything. They chose to bring back G'raha and likely hit a wall with their writing that needs context to be filled.

[Iscah]

Requiring CT could mean any number of things. Maybe Nero's discarded compass finally becomes important. Maybe we need to venture into the World of Darkness again. Maybe they just want the ending of CT to be something that has definitely happened already so they don't have to dance around it with alternate dialogue choices.

I wouldn't count on it definitely indicating anyone's return to the main cast until it happens. There are lots of potential scenarios.

[GeminiReed]

Why is it going to be required now? Is future MSQ lore going to be dependent on knowing what happened in the Crystal Tower raids, or is it only that Crystal Tower may be getting inserted into the MSQ to replace some of the content being removed?

Based on absolutely nothing I suspect that they may be creating two tiers of alliance raids much like we've got 5/6/7 and Expert Roulette and likely giving more attractive rewards to the higher tier set. Making CT mandatory would make sure that the lower tier had some participation.

[Lium]

So fun little history lesson for those who may not know but wayyy back when in the Burning Crusade in WoW you used to have to get keys that would let you into certain dungeons/raids. You would go through a questline to learn about the history of the dungeon or raid to unlock it.

When I leveled my Paladin from 1-80 there were probably 15 dungeons and multiple game features like pvp, hunt logs, sight seeing logs....hell even Challenge logs that I had never unlocked. In fact I skipped literally every single side quest in Mordana that unlocks quite a bit of content in FF14 and was at end game.

FF14 could maybe make an easier log once you hit max level sort of like a check list but I hate hate hate the WoW model in quite a lot of MMO's that just unlock everything automatically at end game. You have no connection with the story at all or what is going on.

Noone finds it strange that TOO THIS DAY when you do a roulette you get a guy watching the cutscenes for the first time in a hard mode? That is because that person was wondering around and finally clicked on some of these quest sitting around and realized there were entire dungeons, raids and trials you were never required to do.

This was me. I didn't start playing FFXIV seriously, as in it didn't become my main game, until 2018. I leveled to 1-70 during Stormblood, and by the time I was caught up with the MSQ back then, I realized there was a metric TON of stuff I never unlocked. I just chanced upon dungeons and other features randomly. Or I'd see someone with a cool mount or ask how I could change my hairstyle, and then find out there's quests to unlock it or marks to earn it. I didn't even know about squadrons until I saw someone posting about it here on the forums.

So yeah, there's a lot of easy to miss stuff for players joining late in the game. Pun intended.

PS. Raid attunements in WoW were a real pain in the neck.

[Iscah]

(spoilers)

There's no spoiler warning on the thread so this should probably be under hidden text...

My guess is that they're waking G'raha Tia up on the Source and requiring the raid simply makes their job of story writing a lot easier without needing to handwave the many months it took for the Crystal Exarch to start hero worshiping the WoL in the non-CT timeline. It's not really there to replace anything. They chose to bring back G'raha and likely hit a wall with their writing that needs context to be filled.

There is no "non-CT" timeline for the Exarch - there is a timeline where it happened in its proper place prior to ShB, and a timeline where it happened sometime after... which only makes sense if you don't stare at it too closely, but then it's not really trying to create an alternate canon, just hold things together enough to work for people who didn't play it in the right order.

In any case, whether or not you(r character) has ever met G'raha Tia, the Exarch has met you in his distant past and explored the Crystal Tower with you. There's no need to handwave some alternate reason as to why he knows you because there's only one version of those events, whether it's in your past or your future.

Making CT mandatory doesn't just make it "easier" to write a plotline where we wake up young G'raha - it is an absolute requirement because otherwise he isn't there to be woken up.

Though as I said earlier, there are other events that would also require CT completion for continuity. Or they might just want to make absolutely sure that whatever happens to the Exarch in the upcoming story, you-the-player have full context and there is one established version of the WoL's interactions with G'raha that don't rely on an ambiguous "maybe this happened, maybe it didn't yet" format of story.

They made the ambiguity work in ShB but it does put restrictions on the story they can tell.