I'd rather have no MSQ and more dungeons and raids at this point . . .

[Malthir]

Bad take IMO.

It's a bad story but it isn't completely unsalvageable.

and personally for me, even if a story is bad, which I did find this one to be for a lot of it -- It still doesn't detract from some of the world building that goes on, and nor does it detract from the potential intrigue later down the line.

Content itself can quite as easily struggle with the same dilemma honestly. Dungeons can be a massive swing and a miss... They can also be a homerun. Same for the trials, and same for any regular raids that they do.

Yeah I also don't think it's a good idea to delete MSQ entirely. One of the issues with the current MSQ, is it's trying to be an Epic story, but without the setup.

IMO it would have been better, to cut all the Wuk stuff down to literally the first zone, maybe the second, do not resolve the contest! Then zone 3 we go off with Eistinein and have an adventure were we meet some new NPC do some stuff adventuring dungeons exploring etc. Zone 4 Erenvilles little wildwest arc is fine. Then the second act begins

The attack on Tural, we rush back do a solo duty where we arrive a the far side of the bridge the Scions are all arriving too having seen the ships, a kind of holidays over type of scene. Then we all start kicking ass, fight our way back to the city with the other scions in the dutry. As we progress to the centre square you meet Bak, Wuk and Koana, they are fighting off the invaders side by side. We see a smaller ship head to the throne room. Fight plays out the same just as he goes for the killing blow though, WoL run over and just does a kick or punch basically the same as we do in the fight with the zenos cutscene. It backs off Zoraal and with most of his forces being destroyed he jumps onto his transport makes his threat that if we don't surrender he will come back and wipe out the city etc. Gulool still dies of injuries sustained.

Second Act

Plays out similar, we get little bit of strife in the siblings, they are getting along better but with no one currently declared the leader they are learning to share responsibilities. After we beat Zooral, Sphene does her there can be no peace speech, then teleports away taking the golden city portal the robot army and ships. We don't know where she's gone or what she's planning next. End of MSQ

I'm not a great writer but at least that would give us things going on it breaks up the monotonous cutscene info dumps where people just speak at you for like 20m and the constant series of speak to Wuk MSQ. It would also leave you with things to think about a potential new enemy we don't know much about. Who's going to be the next leader of Tural etc etc. Smaller stories to world build, it's like the writers were trying to write the conclusion to a long storyline they had only just started crafting a few hours ago.

There's plenty of people that can write better than me on this forum alone so I'm not suggesting my plot overview is better, just the idea of breaking the MSQ into small chunks of various stories leaving things open for further development and using more Solo Duties where the player gets to actually do stuff around the zones, would have been better than walk to the glowy circle and watch this for 5-10m

[Kaurhz]

Yeah I also don't think it's a good idea to delete MSQ entirely. One of the issues with the current MSQ, is it's trying to be an Epic story, but without the setup.

There's plenty of people that can write better than me on this forum alone so I'm not suggesting my plot overview is better, just the idea of breaking the MSQ into small chunks of various stories leaving things open for further development and using more Solo Duties where the player gets to actually do stuff around the zones, would have been better than walk to the glowy circle and watch this for 5-10m

I think there's a thousand different things they could do if they wanted to make it interesting, to be honest. It is as you say it tried to be an epic story without the required build-up. So many former centerpiece characters were relegated to ther sideline, which is OK, but it is not OK when the character we're following doesn't get the needed growth to justify it. Like, we can say she got growth, but it wasn't in the right areas, it was largely underpinned by maintaining that which was already established; peace for 'her people'. Ultimately this only came at jeopardy for a small moment, which ultimately got watered down for her irrational care of trying to solve absolutely everything for everyone to the point where it came off as aggressive and forceful. (The whole scene in the final trial was absolutely unnecessary mid-trial.

This only ended up serving to keep her a fairly single-dimensional character, versus someone like Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja to a lesser extent. I started off really hating both of them as characters, but ultimately came to actually enjoy where they were going. This is why I think this is a bad-take thread more than anything, because there were moments where they did actually show.

I am just hoping more than anything that it is only a temporary consequence of it being a new arc and them feeling out what directions they can take the story.