The MSQ should be optional content! Make dungeons / raids standalone!

[ssunny2008]

The biggest issue with FF14 as a MMORPG is its big relation between the story and general content.

The story itself sadly doesn´t offer much action between all those smalltalk- and cutscenequests, which should be fixed at first FOR A SOLO EXPERIENCE.
Second... all the dungeon, trial- and general raidcontent should become optional AND ALSO AVAILABLE WITHOUT THE NEED TO END THE STORY.

Why so? Because you would get way more players into the game, allow veterans to play their alts, and and and...


The game is getting longer and longer with every update. It already takes ages to get level 100 to finally being able to play the endgame-stuff in general or with friends who played this game for atleast a year.
Even playing an alt-char just for fun, to have a 2nd character for raids or whatever reason you believe, is the worst thing to do in FF14. (Meanwhile they allow 8 characters per server...) Yes, i could buy a couple of boosts, but common... i would still need to go through each new expansion over and over again just because...

Just let the players decide, how and WHEN they want to play the content. Let them decide if they want to hunt down the story or if they´re here for the glorious savage / ultimate experience.


Also... i know a couple of friends who stopped playing within the first 30 level of the game, because they got bored af.
Why? They´ve nothing to do, nothing to care for... moving from A to B, maybe avoiding an AOE, they don´t even own enough skills until they hit level 70?!

If you go the way to differentiate the MSQ from dungeon / raidcontent, you wouldn´t even need a levelcap or something. Story could be done completely balanced out with a lot of class-driven skills unlocked from the go.
On the other hand just expand the class-quests to add some challenges where poeple can easily level up / get their skills for the whole content outside of the MSQ.


TLDR:

- Balance the MSQ without the need for levelcaps, dungeon or raidcontent. Leave it as the singleplayer-experience you ever wanted to create and add more fights like the one against Zenos.

- Expand classquests to level up and unlock skills (getting classknowledge) to prepare the players for the rest of FF14 and it´s dungeon / raidcontent. Such minor-storylines should offer a path through the world like MSQ does actually, but with only 1/10 or even less of its time needed.

That way everyone can play / do what they prefer without having to put 300h+ into MSQ to play the content they actually want to play with friends and a whole skillset you won´t get until hitting level 70.

[Bubert]

Maybe you should go play Wow then. Ffxiv doesn’t need this.

[Infindox]

Your comment literally matches your profile picture, to be sure....

[theunhappypotato]

i think that its a good idea to decoupl msq from the raids and stuff cause i'll be honest ff14 msq is painfully boring at times and doesnt really teach you how to play the game anyways, i know its a story focused mmo but ifpeople wanna experience the story let them do it, if not then not cause its pretty annyoing when i make an raid alt i need to go through 400+ hours of msq just to be able to

[Enkidoh]

The only required raid for the main scenario is The Crystal Tower and that was because of how Shadowbringers's storyline developed with the Crystal Tower playing a central and major role in the story and setting of that expansion (and of course, the introduction of a certain character who ends upjoining the Scions was first introduced as part of Crystal Tower's story specifically.

You could get away with not having done CT to a point, but eventually it could no longer be handwaved away and thus SE had to mandate it's completion in order to proceed in ShB's story. It was simply inescapable. For a new player just started though it isn't something they really need to think about too much, and can do when it suits them, as long as they complete it before a certain point in ShB's story which requires completion to proceed.

Thankfully though, SE has never mandated a raid for the main scenario since, although completing them does add certain dialogue and scenes to certain points of the storyline, you can easily proceed without them.

Really, CT isn't too difficult to do nowadays even when synced due to power creep. The only annoyance is having to form a party to enter and not being able to solo it.

[MicahZerrshia]

The msq requirements wouldn't be an issue of there wasn't so many expacs to get through before you can do anything. But I would rather them just give us a new starter zone or better yet, have the new expacs be branches off of the main msq, like FFXI did.

In FFXI, instead of having to do the base game + RotZ + CoP + ToAU + WotG, all in order, to do Adoulin, I can just do Adoulin as soon as I am able to get to Lower Jeuno, you don't even need to do the base game much less any other expacs. That is how the expansions should work from here on out.

[Hazelx3]

I am trying to finnish a MSQ on my war and I am new in this game, its not possible for me because I can not find anyone in the queue and its not possible to do this with NPCs so I am stuck for now with the MSQ. I agree that the MSQ should be optional and not mandatory this ruins the experience for me, because I can not find anyone to play with as I did not join a guild and I am more of a solo player

[Mesarthim]

I am trying to finnish a MSQ on my war and I am new in this game, its not possible for me because I can not find anyone in the queue and its not possible to do this with NPCs so I am stuck for now with the MSQ. I agree that the MSQ should be optional and not mandatory this ruins the experience for me, because I can not find anyone to play with as I did not join a guild and I am more of a solo player

That's impossible. You're also in Europe so I doubt the population is so bad you can't even do duty finder content. But be sure to be mindful of other language settings for the duty finder (especially in multilingual regions) as well as time of day.

[LeCorbeaux]

I am trying to finnish a MSQ on my war and I am new in this game, its not possible for me because I can not find anyone in the queue and its not possible to do this with NPCs so I am stuck for now with the MSQ. I agree that the MSQ should be optional and not mandatory this ruins the experience for me, because I can not find anyone to play with as I did not join a guild and I am more of a solo player

Are you hung up on the Crystal Tower trio of alliance raids? In this case, good luck, try different times and language settings as others suggested. Other than that, go unsynced. This should work fine up until you meet Susano (The Pool of Tribute, level 63 Stormblood raid), though a well-equipped 90+ warrior might be able to solo it anyway with a bit of cheese.

[Hazelx3]

Yes, I have choosed every language, but I changed /visited? to Materia to finnish the quest, I think at that time when I was online nobody was in queue in Europe.
The going unsynced into the dungeon is a good tip, I will try that when I run into issues again.