When are we as player going to demand from SE a better MSQ experience

[Roda]

I'm not gonna poopoo on that sequence too much cause at least it was gameplay. And

since he was her bully figure it's only fair that she would canonically get the win. Though it'd be nice if we got an ogcd to cheer her on and get more lb

The biggest sins for me are (full story spoilers)

the alpaca contest, the cook-off, the float fixing and parade sequence, the seige, and the freaking train ride should've all been gameplay sequences AT LEAST

There's probably more, but those ones stuck out to me the most.

[Garolymar]

There were so many opportunities for them to do neat duties in this expansion too.

The cooking festival should've been an actual duty where you gather and mix ingredients to make the tacos, The attack on the train could've been a shooter segment like they have at the golden saucer. Also I'm miffed we never got a friendly duel with Koana, Thancred and Urianger as a battle duty

[Lusarae]

I am hoping that this less well received start to a new story serves as a wake up call for them to finally modernize the gameplay aspects of the MSQ.

Full agree. We had an amazing writer for the last two expansions, why did we replace her with someone else? Don't fix what ain't broke.

As for the gameplay it's just depressing trying to play this game with a friend. You're just watching cutscenes without each other. You're fighting solo scenarios and maybe like 2% of the quests let you kill some mobs together. Then you get like three or four dungeons to do and suddenly its over. We need more active storytelling. Something like the variant dungeons. That you can solo if you wish, or bring just one other player in with you. Have the npcs talking as you're fighting.

The "escort" quests need to be redesigned from the ground up. No more clicking on them to get them to speak. They need to chat with you, on their own, in voice acted dialogue as you move about an area. Think how much more exciting getting to explore the new city would have been if you didn't have to drop everything to watch a static cutscene every time you got to a new part of town. Just have you run around at your own pace, exploring certain objective markers in whatever order you wished. Hearing them talk as you pass the markers.

Even for the "MMO" experience they could improve things. Like when you get to yet another cutscene area you just see a crowd of people "afk" in the cutscene with the movie logo. How about instead, have like a fate-esque boss fight that scales to however many people are attacking it. So you can all fight it together, get a nice bonus reward for participating, and then move on with the plot. You could even have little events like the stuff you can do in town MSQ moments like the Ishgard Restoration Fetes. Imagine instead of having to talk to some boring npc you'll never see again, you have to play a minigame alongside other players to 'learn' the lesson they were trying to teach you when making that dish for Lamat's cooking trial.

All the fun stuff we can do as a community is just not in the MSQ for some reason. Like how come there's no jumping trials at all? Like the golden saucer, but something you have to do for the MSQ progression. It doesn't have to be Kugane tower difficulty but it could be similar to the golden saucer stuff which I'd sag 95% of the community can do without much trouble. Basically we need more gameplay. Active storytelling. Save the cutscenes for the super heavy moments that would never want to tempt anyone to try and skip it. If its you just farting around doing nothing important then it needs to be you traveling somewhere with the npcs talking, or you killing something with npcs/friends, etc. Let us push our buttons. I'm sure there's plenty of other better things they can come up with its not my job to come up with it all.

[Little_Giant]

They should start with adding more story through gameplay scenarios. I think single player duties does this decently well, we just need more of it to balance out the all the talking in the cutscenes.
Any situation where I can actually use my abilities in the story is a good situation.

[Reimmi]

They should start with adding more story through gameplay scenarios. I think single player duties does this decently well, we just need more of it to balance out the all the talking in the cutscenes.
Any situation where I can actually use my abilities in the story is a good situation.

They don't even need to do a unch of solo scenarios either, just have some voiced dialogue while we walk on a road and enemies attack us in waves

[Voidmage]

Agree. DT is sadly really lacking in the game aspect regarding the MSQ.

Normally I don’t have a problem with cutscenes but this time I was almost begging to do anything.

Anyone remember the Ronka puzzle in Shb or the hangover stuff in EW?
Simple storytelling through gameplay to break the cutscene monotony.

I think the biggest problem this time around is that the entire expansion is centered on one Charakter namely Wuk Lamat.
There is a several disconnect at least for me given that we have no role in the story.
We are not really a mentor but aren‘t adventuring either. We are just „there“ to stand beside the main character but are not unimportant enough to not be constantly at her side and can’t even be alone in our room without her barging in.
We don‘t even do anything in the story for the most part, just standing there nodding.

It’s really strange.

I actually like the story itself minus the pacing but the missing gameplay and the third wheel status of us really sours it for me.

Estinien is more of an adventurer now then we are…

Just at least give me ANYTHING to do in the MSQ. I would even pick up rocks again!

[Dogempire]

Snip

Honestly, it wouldn't be so bad if the writing wasn't also kinda slow, I had an absolute blast in

Shaaloani, between Erenville actually being really entertaining company, the change of pace from forest to wild west, and us throwing that dung into the campfire and the absolute chaos that ensued, it's honestly my favorite zone so far.

Plus I feel like we actually got a bit of our character back, I couldn't help but smile at the "But the Rroneek Erenville, the Rroneek!" dialogue option we got at the beginning of the zone, and the fact that Erenville was just like "Here's a bag, go pick up some bird dung" and our WoL was like "...Ugh, do I really have to?" made me crack up.

Plus there was the entire subplot with the sheriff and the other midlander whose name I forget, as well as meeting Jerryk and the trolley crew's source counterparts that was genuinely kinda touching.

It just really feels like the writing picked up in that zone, albeit I'm still at level 96 in the MSQ so maybe it gets better, but man, we need to get whoever wrote the MSQ for that zone to do more.

[KisaiTenshi]

First off, I am not referring to the story. I am talking about the gameplay. We are now on the 5th expansion and the MSQ formula remains the same; talk to a couple of npcs, do some fetch quest, talk to more npcs, kill one or two mobs every couple of hours, rinse and repeat. It's feels extremely outdated. I think in the span of an expansions MSQ (excluding trails and dungeons) we probably don't get to kill more than 30 mobs.

This is how I want a MMORPG to work:
10 minutes of story
10 minutes of combat
10 minutes of explore

Optional quests unlock "free gear" for that level. MSQ quests reward only EXP. No money.
Money is only earned by completing the dungeon at levelsync+ilevel sync or the first time.
Roulette earns you EXP+money the first time that day (eg sellable to NPC only "allag coins"), EXP+ gear tokens thereafter.

What I want to get away from is 4 hours of unvoiced cutscenes and 1, 20 minute dungeon. Do we need exactly a solo duty every 20 minutes, No. But if a "road is dangerous" why aren't we encountering bandits multiple times? Half the MSQ just seems like "go to X, and then walk all the way across the map to Y" encountering nothing dangerous. You just exchange yapping and then more yapping.

I'm not really hating on the fact there is story here. But even I, someone who enjoys the game's story overall, find it somewhat exhausting to basically do the mcguffin quests, and none of them actually involve a fight. But if you go back to EW, and Shadowbringers, you notice that this distance between each dungeon/trial is nearly the same (20 to the first dungeon, and then 15 to each dungeon/trial thereafter.) So why does DT feel so much longer? Are the quests actually longer? The lack of stakes?

Like would it be so much to ask to give us twice as many trials. Like aside from ARR which you basically did nothing of substance for the first 30 levels, why is it that there aren't "trials" that are of a different variety. Maybe not all the trials have to be high stakes choreographic works of art. Why aren't there 8-man duties that aren't trials/raids. Remember how we had 1-hour long 8-man MSQ dungeons that were like 50% cutscene? Can we maybe get some of those types of things back but without the 20 minute cutscenes? Like that original Livia fight in the white devil magitek armor was interesting, but didn't really work because the armor did no damage to the party. Or taking the magitek armor ourselves into something else that requires blowing up doors.

[Valkret]

But if a "road is dangerous" why aren't we encountering bandits multiple times? Half the MSQ just seems like "go to X, and then walk all the way across the map to Y" encountering nothing dangerous.

This has always been one of my biggest gripes with he game!! "The road is very dangerous blah blah blah" Then we get on the road and absolutely nothing, or if we are lucky 2 mobs spawn at a predetermined location, but the challenge is so braindead that it takes absolutely no effort at all. Then we are back to the super dangerous road, to talk to several other nps for 3 more hours.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Well, playing through the MSQ further... It only took them like 6 levels into the expansion for things to actually start happening. Until a very specific point, aside from the first Trial fight, everything's been very slow paced and incredibly low stakes.