MSQ Needs Further Condensing

[Reyketi]

If you want to be taken seriously, you might want to actually address people's arguments. Y'know, instead of taking out a small snippet, plastering on a snarky comment and then pretending like you have a point.

I do have a point.

You can't say

Length is not an issue.

when, to SE, and their customer base, it is.

If the MSQ length were not an issue, it would not have been altered.

Best Wishes

-Reyketi

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I do have a point.

You can't say when, to SE, and their customer base, it is.

If the MSQ length were not an issue, it would not have been altered.

Best Wishes

-Reyketi

Only 1 subset of the quests was altered. Therefore, the rest of the story length is not an issue.

[Ammokkx]

If the MSQ length were not an issue, it would not have been altered.

Ahem.

Still haven't seen you actually properly respond to this post which goes through literally any and every argument you've posted in this thread, shows why they're wrong and does it without snark.

Here, I'll even snip out the section that undermines the foundation of your point:

The edits made to ARR and post-ARR are their oldest and most notoriously grindy part of the whole game. Older players routinely warned newbies that "the grind through post-ARR is terrible but it gets better in the expansions". The patch quests were designed to be time-fillers that often didn't drive the story forward.

Literally everyone and their mother- even the absolute diehards- could agree on one thing: Post-ARR sucked and still kinda sucks. Nobody ever argued otherwise, and yes, that was a good bit to cut down on.

It's also universally seen as pretty much the only content in the game that was deliberately designed to waste our time.

But not only this, there was another reason for cutting down on it.

Crystal Tower is mandatory and added playtime.

Crystal tower is not just a side story anymore- you need to clear it to be able to progress the main quest. Do you know what that means? Another couple hours of cutscenes, dialogue and gameplay added on top. In other to streamline that experience, post-ARR being cut down to not include as much blatant filler would keep the amount of time you needed to go through that section at roughly the same point.

But sure, the game is too long in general! Nevermind the fact we were and still are stuck at level 50 forever, one of the longest walls in the game, which has a much shorter and smoother transition period come the next few expansions.

But yeah no let's extrapolate this one extreme, isolated case of bad design of the same era that got us the infamous praetorium to the entire game, including content made in 2020, as if the dev team are still repeating the exact same mistakes. Y'know, the same mistakes like making Coils of Bahamut super hard to the point you can't add it to a roulette, meaning players can easily miss it, yet it's super important lore for closure on the shutdown of 1.0 and Bahamut.

The team has already recognized post-ARR was a mistake and deliberately worked to avoid those in future expansions. You cannot compare them. To do so is to be blatantly disingenuous. But I'm sure you knew that already, right? It's easier to spin a narrative when you

keep it to a short few lines

full of witty comebacks

and then sign off!

Best wishes,

-Ammokkx

[TurtlesAWD]

OP I hope next expansion they double the amount of cutscenes, just for you

[Reyketi]

I am not sure that you have any grasp of my stance. So, I'll summarize it for you.

The MSQ was condensed, and SE is soon to release another expansion, adding more content to the already lengthy, and mandatory, MSQ.

The addition of this expansion is going to undo the progress they made on reducing the length of the MSQ.

At a certain point, this process of going through the mandatory MSQ becomes unreasonable excessive. Or, in Blizzard's case, the leveling process, which they overhauled their entire game to remedy.

I understand that you, or others might enjoy playing a 500 hour game, but not everyone has the time for that, some might not be all that interested in the MSQ, which turns them off from the game.

Best Wishes

-Reyketi

[DPZ2]

I understand that you, or others might enjoy playing a 500 hour game, but not everyone has the time for that, some might not be all that interested in the MSQ, which turns them off from the game.

This is why there are multiple MMOs out there. If you don't like the MSQ, you can find one that doesn't pay any attention to story, if it'll make you happier.

There is no Law out there that says "You can only play one MMO". Get your kicks for story from FFXIV, get your kicks for PvP from any number of MMOs that encourage that style of play, get your kicks for dungeon running 24x7 from others that encourage that style of play.

There's a bunch of choices out there. Explore them all until you find the one that fits you.

Just don't expect the publishers of this game to change the basic fundamentals. You'll be disappointed.

[TurtlesAWD]

I understand that you, or others might enjoy playing a 500 hour game, but not everyone has the time for that, some might not be all that interested in the MSQ, which turns them off from the game.

During cutscene, press escape, hit yes.


Ultimately I think the crux of your argument is that content under max level doesn't matter or shouldn't matter, in favor of what I assume is the parsing-for-lootboxes upgrade roulette end-game content represents. I suppose if that's what you're after I would have to recommend playing Microsoft Excel. Strips out everything you clearly don't like in MMOs - no levelling, no MSQ, no other players to distract you from Progression, no music to mute, no delays between fights, and you can set the difficulty as high as you want.

[Ammokkx]

I am not sure that you have any grasp of my stance. So, I'll summarize it for you.

The MSQ was condensed, and SE is soon to release another expansion, adding more content to the already lengthy, and mandatory, MSQ.

The addition of this expansion is going to undo the progress they made on reducing the length of the MSQ.

At a certain point, this process of going through the mandatory MSQ becomes unreasonable excessive. Or, in Blizzard's case, the leveling process, which they overhauled their entire game to remedy.

I understand that you, or others might enjoy playing a 500 hour game, but not everyone has the time for that, some might not be all that interested in the MSQ, which turns them off from the game.

Best Wishes

-Reyketi

First off, this is not a reply to arguments. This is just you stating your stance with no evidence again. You have made it abundantly clear what you think. We disagree. Now start replying to us in earnest if you actually want us to be convinced you have a point and that you're not just some raving madman rocking back-and-forth in a restraint jacket muttering "condense msq... condense msq... condense msq..." to themselves over and over again.

Second, as Iscah has pointed out, the MSQ is not one whole. It is 4-8 chunks, depending on how you view it, which have been chained together to form one whole. It is like reading a serialized book series. You don't just randomly start cutting out chapters of a book because the entire series has become too long of a read.

I have also pointed out before that there is very little you can change in the MSQ without affecting the integrity of the storyline. At most you can make a few more quest tasks streamlined, or take out a grand total of maybe 5 quests, in an expansion. That isn't going to magically make the MSQ an arbitrary number of hours like you seem to wish it will. Even if they did that, it is an immense amount of work to go back and do this literally every time a new expansion comes out. Is that payoff worth it to SE? You seem to argue "yeah, obviously" but if it was so obvious then why haven't they done so in full yet? Why have they only briefly and delicately touched select parts of the game and not the expansions as a whole?

Let me give you a hint.

Because an isolated part of the game was a problem case and not the game as a whole. People drop off at 50 not because they can't get to endgame, but because level 50 is boring as all hell compared to what comes after.

And also, I understand that you, or others, might not enjoy playing a "500 hour game" as you put it (which lol I've put far more hours into this game than that on everything but the MSQ) but that begs the question...

Who's experience is more valid? Yours or mine? Who, of us two, should SE listen to and cater to?

Neither. Neither is the answer. They should stick to their core philosophy when designing this game, extremely carefully consider any feedback from the community, and keep going on mostly the same waters they've charted so far.

Why, you may ask? Because that's what's currently gotten them an ever-growing MMO with success comparable to WoW's monolithic status. FFXIV is an absolutely beloved game by those who play it and for some, yes, I'm sorry to say, it's because of the 666 hours of story content. Not for all of us, certainly not for you. But clearly for enough people that they think it worthwhile to add more high-quality story each expansion, and certainly enough for the lead writer of Shadowbringers to get a standing ovation merely for mentioning the fact she was the lead writer of Shadowbringers.

But go on, please, do go on, about how most players don't care about the story. I'd love to see the statistics you have to back this up. So far you've only been picking out choice quotes from the odd person hopping into this thread saying "i agree with you reyketi!" when people who are against it outnumber you at least three-to-one, if not more. First page says this too: Your post has only about a third of the likes of TaleraRistain's post. People are disagreeing with you en masse and yet you're still pushing your stance as being the correct one for a majority of the playerbase, when the majority of the playerbase seems to want the exact opposite of what you're suggesting.

Now, here's the million dollar question: Are you actually going to address the foundation of my points as I have done for yours, or are you going to continue ignoring my arguments in favor of pushing your one narrow view despite everyone telling you you're wrong and finding new ways to do so? Because if there is one thing I'm tired of, it's people making unsubstantiated claims from an ego-centric perspective that they claim is representative for other people when all they're doing is going "My way or the highway."

[Rinhi]

Now, here's the million dollar question: Are you actually going to address the foundation of my points as I have done for yours, or are you going to continue ignoring my arguments in favor of pushing your one narrow view despite everyone telling you you're wrong and finding new ways to do so? Because if there is one thing I'm tired of, it's people making unsubstantiated claims from an ego-centric perspective that they claim is representative for other people when all they're doing is going "My way or the highway."

their lack of actual arguments throughout the whole thread should have made it obvious that they're just a troll who periodically bumps his own thread with the same post to get people to respond to them

best wishes

-rinh

[Ammokkx]

their lack of actual arguments throughout the whole thread should have made it obvious that they're just a troll who periodically bumps his own thread with the same post to get people to respond to them

best wishes

-rinh

I won't deny the possibility of them being a troll, but I'm very conservative when it comes to labeling people as such. At the very least, MPK and Titanman are a lot more obvious in their attempts, as they have a much more varied repertoire.