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

[Verathel]

It's pretty good point, an excellent story hides that pretty well and personally never cared about it in SHB and Endwalker even Stormblood...Once it becomes less good you start to notice it.

They could definitely spice it up or at least do what WOW does and add more rares, treasures and achievements for players to do.

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

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 It's feels extremely outdated.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.

We were able to overlook this in the past two expansions because the story being told was so good. In my opinion no matter how hard SE tried, they were never going to be able to to capture the magic in storytelling that we've had for the past several years with one single expansion. Just because these type of stories take time to build and it takes time to create an in depth world and complex characters. And I am ok with that, I went into dawntrail fully expecting the story to be average. But I did not expect to be so bored playing through it.

Part of me is actually happy that a lot of people are not liking the story, so we can finally realize that outside of the story, how boring and monotonous the MSQ content actually is. The other part of me is a little upset that SE actually thinks that 6+ hours of boring fetch quest is acceptable content.

When it comes to the MSQ, SE has been riding on the back of their brilliant writers and amazing storytelling. 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.

Words words words I ain't readin allat

[Gralna]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

[CosmoBabylonia]

I think one of the things they could do is bring in Western localization earlier in the writing process. It seems like something is getting lost in translation, and the dialogue is unbelievably repetitive. I'm annoyed that characters are still talking halfway through nearly every cutscene. 50% of the cutscene dialogue is just restating things in different words like they had to give a 10 minute presentation but only wrote a 4 minute one. I don't speak JP at all, so I don't know if that's a cultural thing with their language or what. But it feels way off in English.

Since you mentioned JP... Usual caveats apply for below. I'm rummaging through their image boards with Google translate right now to find more gems.

[Malthir]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

Actually the cornerstone of good story telling is to show not tell. So instead of a 10m cutscene of being told the entire back story of a culture while we sit there like a lemon, we could I don't know say do a solo duty with the lama traders while we're on the back of their wagons defending their stock from mob waves, as we deliver important goods to people. Giving the players something to do while they learn and feel engaged and involved in the story, instead of being treated like a child that should sit there quietly and listen to someone talking at them.

[Gralna]

Actually the cornerstone of good story telling is to show not tell. So instead of a 10m cutscene of being told the entire back story of a culture while we sit there like a lemon, we could I don't know say do a solo duty with the lama traders while we're on the back of their wagons defending their stock from mob waves, as we deliver important goods to people. Giving the players something to do while they learn and feel engaged and involved in the story, instead of being treated like a child that should sit there quietly and listen to someone talking at them.

[CosmoBabylonia]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

It's usually always better to show than it is to tell.

Like if you watch Saving Private Ryan, facial expressions alone conveyed what each person was like and how they think. The whole scene at the AA radar was so good because of it. The entire break down of Capt Miller's character was done so well. Nowhere did we get this long ass exposition describing how each member of the main cast is, and how they think the world should be. It's done through snippets of their regular conversations with others and how they act under fire or dire mission critical situations (the part where Vin Diesel's character dies was an awesome scene for this too).

The scene where General Marshall was reading an old letter sent to a deceased solder's family told the audience exactly how he was. He was as compassionate person and values the lives of his men. It was only done through him reading a letter out loud as oppose to the film down right exposition dump on us.

If you want the epitome of SHOW DON'T TELL, go watch Das Boot. It's probably the greatest war movie ever made. Makes you value good writing. The old one made in West Germany, not the new garbage Netflix series by the way.

Meanwhile in DT, we've had NPCs non stop blasting to our ears how great Wuk is and is the second coming of Jesus.

[Ranhansha]

Never. Some people say this story is amazing. Also, I heard SE said they adjusted Summoner this expansion according to player feedfack. ACCORDING TO FEEDBACK! If that's to be believed and they changed the MSQ, next expansion we would have a 100-hour long cutscene where the WoL nods and babysits a lizardman where the villains have been taken from a modern Disney film and the Scions follow you spitting snarky remarks every 5 hours. But it will be fine because Erenvile is so handsome and cute and Estinien will be shirtless for a while.

[Sonoskay]

I kind of agree. I'm taking my sweet time through the MSQ and even if it was partially self inflicted Im taking to many side NPCS as awell as taking every opprotunity to talk to the scions, i found it surprising my first combat encounter was 3 hours in, and was only 3 basic mobs. EW and SHB had this issue too. though they had a little more going on Story wise.

[A_moth_called_rose]

They'll start making a better MSQ when you all can come together to make a coherent singular thought and not 100 different "catmommy bad actually" threads.