Why New Players Quit FFXIV
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- My experience playing the MSQ has been... mixed. This video is about why I DON'T plan to skip the FF14 main story quests, but am still struggling to enjoy some of them. It's also about my experience with the FFXIV community and how they react when I express these feelings...
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EDIT: So many comments!! thank you all for sharing your opinion (especially folks with a different perspective). i'll do my best to respond when i can... maybe i should make a follow-up highlighting how folks feel?
i recorded this video a little while ago and i'm now working on the level 40 quests... i will say there's a lot to love and while i don't plan to skip i'm still trying to balance what i bring to stream 🤔
I definitely think your issue is looking for ways to make the game entertaining for an audience, which is why you're not enjoying it as much as you should. Some of the community will get angry at me for this, but I believe some games are just not streamable. There's a reason why FF14 rakes in so much money, but is barely viewed on Twitch. It's just not a fun stream game to entertain people with outside of a few msq cutscene moments and raiding. Bellular made the right call playing his experience and not streaming it, as he wasn't working around a streaming schedule potentially making things harder on his experience.
I also think you really should, as much as it has been hammered down on you to the point of annoyance probably-take the game at your own pace and not worry about that lvl 50 wall. Cause worrying about it is what makes it feel so much worse.
I am a veteran since beta, like all my peers, we organically experience the MSQ at an intended pace. MSQ was never meant to be binge worthy content. And the advice they gave you about all MSQ is critical, I'll have to agree. A simple thing and most hated thing like wine fetch quests early on in ARR is used as part of the whole grand scheme way later. No, it's not the way you think. The best way to explain it is imagine you are an inventor who have made something that changed the world. And during the interview, they asked you about your method of that invention. You start with the boring and mundane stuff that lead you to the idea before getting into how it was made. I hope that made sense. Anyway, don't worry too much about being entertaining. Believe us, we know, try to think of it as we are vampires. We stick around for the juicy bits to sink our teeth onto.
just dont be that one guy who skipped everything in the story AND bought a level boost and then complained about how "the story sucks and the game is bad"
I recently started playing, and I just try to not think about the sheer AMOUNT of quests that I need to do to be "catched up", because if I knew, I'm sure it would start to feel like a chore and eventually I would burnout :D I just go through in my own pace and try to keep the motivation going on consistently
I've actually replayed the entirety of the ARR MSQ on stream for my friends who love story but don't really play games. They enjoyed it. Granted, some things have been removed to shorten down the quest chain, and a lot of those quests are actually quiet short.
i think this is a smart approach for sure
@@genisay that is a good point... the list looks long but many of the quests are quite short. i think the feeling of busywork would be a lot less if there were fewer quests going back and forth (just to talk to someone, for example), but it's not as if the quests each take 45 minutes.
You're not wrong.
FF14 has a very loyal player base who tend to focus on the stuff they love and ignore stuff that's not so good. They're also great at promoting the game so tend to do a bit of a sales pitch to new players.
The truth is, you need to do the MSQ - the core story quest. Everything else? You can safely ignore. There's a lot of side quests but most of them are just for flavour and worth ignoring (with a few exceptions like the ones to unlock the barber, the transmog feature, and other class unlocks).
Although it might be frustrating to hear people insisting that every single quest is important, it is for very good reason. So many plot points and little details come back from earlier on in the story, stuff you'd never expect to make a resurgence, and the payoff for these things is worth the early slog. Things that you feel lukewarm on in ARR, get recontextualized and expanded upon further down the line. Yes people will straight up say "you just gotta get past the first 60 hours and get to Heavensward, then the game becomes really good" like it's no big deal. I understand, it feels ridiculous to hear. But from the perspective of those people, ARR is a small fraction of the overall HUNDREDS of hours of story so you can understand both sides.
I wouldn't worry about your viewers being bored of MSQ. People who watch FF streams are complete vampires for story. They know what they're in for and don't mind sitting through the less interesting parts. They're making an investment and excitedly waiting for your mind to be blown when it comes to some of the later story stuff. Is it worth it? I'm an avid ff14 MSQ enjoyer as well as hardcore raider so of course my answer is going to be yes. To put it into an example you might be able to understand: I'd play through the mediocre story of ARR 10x if it meant I could erase my memory and experience the Shadowbringers or Endwalker story for the first time again. That's how much I fell in love with this game's story and world and I definitely had moments of doubt and moments where I felt like quitting early on. I'm glad I didn't.
BS, the MSG is ARR is bad, and the ones after until Heavensward are even worse. This is even after they pruned the MSG as it was even worse.
100% agree. I love watching my friends play through at their own page and them send me screen shots and all caps messages when the 'good stuff' hits, or even commiserating when they have to do a horrid ARR quest chain they're hating.
i hear you, i do. and i appreciate this perspective (it's helpful to hear). but i honestly believe that the real core of the story, worldbuilding, emotions and all, can be experience without the quest where you hand out steak for 5 minutes. those type of quests, imo, lead to people quitting when they might have stayed.
@@MrsMothmom Believe it or not, ARR is about 20% shorter than it used to be after quests were cut out. The devs have taken other steps at making it somewhat more tolerable including reworking all of the final fights but unfortunately the 10 year old design still seeps through. I think they could still cut down some fetch quests like the horrible wine part before Titan that stretches on forever but its definitely better than it used to be. Fetch quests like "Go catch me 3 rats for supper" thankfully phase out over time and the game truly allows the narrative to lead the questline without any gimmicks.
Something else that makes things easier in the future is the devs replacing every single voice actor in the english version at the start of HW. We go from having some VA that sound like they could have been hired on a random street corner to some really standout performances by reputable talent. The frequency of voiced cutscenes also increases. About 2 hours 45 mins total in base ARR to 15 hours 48 mins by base Endwalker. It's a lot less taxing being read to than having to read everything for yourself, especially as a streamer who reads unvoiced cutscenes out loud.
@@MrsMothmom I do agree, it could use a rework. Could you believe they already have reworked it a few years ago to de-bloat ARR a bit?
I started a little before Endwalker was released and it was my second time attempting the game (first time was back aroun HW, but I never made it out of ARR). So I totally understand. The only thing that kept me going the second time were friends telling me how much better it got in HW, and ideally that shouldn't be how it works lol
It only gets good later if you follow all the way through.
Some quests aren't super important for the story but where would you skip? No idea. It depends what you think is important. Most of it has some sort of payoff. You would have to hire someone to figure this out, so you wont get the answer from people online, because you will even get conflicting answers. It's 250h of pure story so there is no way you'll get a detailed response.
My solution is that you either sit through it all or skip the entire thing and do it on an alt when you feel like it.
It's not an easy answer as I have no idea what you deem important or not. The story isn't in isolated sections. They build on each other and the writers even used a moment early on as a major story plot several expansions later, and this is a thing they do often. So basically only the writers can say what is important or not, which they have several times as ARR is much shorter than it used to be. Even if we wanted to give the answer it would be impossible. So my answer is do it all or skip it all and come back to it when you feel like it.
I will warn you though. People say it gets better, they do not mean the gameplay or quality of the activity you do in the quests. If you really dislike running back and forth talking to people and clicking on a marker and watch your character look left and right for 5 seconds, that will not change at all. What people mean is that the story gets more interesting. That only works though if you do the entire story, and yeah it is rough to get through at points. Take breaks and step away from it, make something fun with it. Perhaps a drinking game based on the story lol. No idea, but yeah you're not crazy.
i agree with a lot of this: certainly it's true that the story must build on itself. part of what the early story is doing is developing relationships.
i also agree that a random person online wouldn't be able to tell what i care the most about, and likewise i won't be able to hit every moment that every person in the audience wants to see on stream.
it's true the the writers ultimately decided what was "important" when they wrote the story. if this where a book i might say it's not polite to assume the author added "unnecessary" scenes or characters. however...
some of these quests don't enhance or push forward the story. i just did a quest to go "hype up" some soldiers. it's cute, i suppose, but it doesn't serve the narrative imo. i was stopped in the middle of urgent and very exciting story content to go click on a couple guys to make them less sad. i think this could easily be removed without any loss.
having said that, i know and understand that some aspects won't change and i'm alright with that. video games have limitations, and not every mechanic is perfect. clicking to interact and waiting for my character to pretend to dig for 16 seconds will be here to stay lmao
My personal issue ends up with how long winded some quests are, they make it hard for me to follow and I end up just skimming dialogue because it feels like a lot of the writing is bloated though I do enjoy the story.
@@MrsMothmom @wildeyoung3943
Yeah I can't really disagree that some quests as you're doing them feel useless and unecessary. I also understand that sometimes those type of quests can feel like agony, especially when you're not really in the mood.
All I can say right now is, take breaks when you aren't feeling it, take your time with it, if you're rushing it you'll hate it. And also like some people have suggested that you can skim through it if you're not engaged in it. No need to suffer, it will be really hard to pay attention at that point anyways.
If you're not having fun and it feels like a chore, stop and do something else and come back when/if you feel like it. It's supposed to be enjoyable after all. Mix it up with other content perhaps.
ARR is a slog, it's tough getting past it. Later expansions changes the pace and structure of questing completely.
your performance in this video was great!!! the way you move around really helps to animate your model plus conveys a ton of personality that a ton of vtubers forget to add
also post patch ARR gets hype. I just sped through ARR MSQ and watched recap videos
Post ARR quests are the ones you power through those. Then your in Heavenward & the fun begins. I have leveled 38 characters just to catch stuff I missed that they said that turns out important. Hang in there you can do it.
Greetings! I feel that what most people mean about the "mission critical" aspect is that many things you experience have narrative pay off later or are later referenced in some meaningful way. In other words, even if something isn't exciting it still plays into the larger story at some point, especially npcs. Additionally, a pattern some ff14 players have done in terms of streaming is to do (some) MSQ content off stream and then once you hit a dungeon (there are points at which you can unlock multiple dungeons at once after various story segments at specific level brackets like level 50/60/70) you go live or maybe try to hype up the next "big" moment in the journey. At minimum all blue colored quests are must-do's.
It becomes more and more obvious as you go, especially post-50, when these significant story and/or content access moments happen which can give you a burst of content to work with. The downside is that once you engage with that, there is another interim of quest walls before the next flood of content comes your way. The best I can suggest is to keep playing and a proper cadence of streaming alongside the content you are (about) to gain access to becomes more clear. There are certain dungeons especially that always get a reaction out of the community but I won't say more.
Some of my friends have told me, skip the text cutscenes and just listen to the voiced content. The summaries in the quest log help with keep you up with what happened.
Personally I what I do is, read a minute or two of the texted cutscenes, if they are boring, I skip them.
It was nice to do all the reading when college made me do nothing but read, (and that was a time the story was banging like HW, SB and ShB,) but now that I got a full time job I do not have time for all that fluff.
Should be called "why professional streamers quit ffxiv". Not sure the ffxiv community would care ,though, because "fewer professionals = more authentic".
Ignoring the streamers, what you're left with is that the story is not avoidable ... unless you skip it ... and literally all of it is for free ... until you get to Shadowbringers (soon).
Been playing since stormblood, the way I describe it is that the voice acted cutscenes are the critical cutscenes Most of the time. There are important cutscenes that aren’t voiced but that was the whole plan with ARR, only voice the critical cutscenes
Which are the important quests?
If it has an instance (a dungeon, a fight, a 'something' at the end of it) then it's important.
Thats about... 12 or so between level 1 and 50?
But if you only watch them you wont have a clue what's going on, who the characters are, why this is important etc...
I think you either need to decide that only the instances matter (i.e. things that send you on a duty) and ignore the rest - or commit and do it all.
And as much as people are moaning about the level 50 wall, I've been doing them myself for the last 3 weeks and, seriously, the quests have become so much more streamlined I've found it a massive improvement. And the Crystal Tower is definitely the most fun thing in the game so far!
I like to suggest "skimming" the more dull parts; skipping entirely can leave big holes in your understanding of current events, which the community can verily crucify you for. But you can often simply skim stuff, take in the general idea of what's going on even if all the insignificant details don't stick.
As a *general* (not absolute) rule of thumb, is if the quest has a picture in the accept box, it's important and you need to be attentive. If no image, it's probably not critical, as you put it. But you should still skim over the text to take in the basic gist.
But, at the end of the day, you do you. Play how you want to play, be comfortable and enjoy it in a way that suits you. You simply need to be aware how... uh. Devoted? Large swathes of the community are to the story, and how heretical it's generally considered to be a "skipper"; but as a streamer you can generally get away with a "oh this guy" occasionally even if you don't remember some insignificant peon you talked to dozens of quests ago. The streamer debuff is a known condition. ♥
yes, skimming had been my general rule of thumb. i don't have an intention to actually "skip" stuff, though i've been trying to do the less interesting stuff off stream (i sometimes record dungeons for subs / patrons since those generally come with cutscenes).
the tip about images is a great one - i hadn't even noticed that some didn't have pictures. i'll keep this in mind for sure.
and yes some people are very passionate. generally, i think that's great (there must be some good in it if people love it so dearly). as a streamer i've taken the burden of folk's opinions of me, and that's just fine. at least folks in the community have been articulate and polite for the most part (unlike other communities who shall remain nameless here).
Details and foreshadowing are huge in this game. You will survive ARR. It gets better in the patches and Heavensward is amazing. There are some in ARR that are painful ( lead up to Titan...) But there is a lot of good stuff in there too. And like people have said down below details, details, details come back in the future. My friends and I are actually re-running ARR with the purpose of seeing what we missed. I mean literally brand new character from scratch and yeah back to details and foreshadowing. There are a lot of little things going on that culminate way later in the game. There is stuff us lore lovers missed.
The best way I've tried to put it for interested players who are new to MMOs or maybe MMOers that are used to a certain style of rushing to the end is actually a direct quote from the Producer/Director. It is a Final Fantasy game first, and an MMO second. Mind, it's still an AMAZING mmo when you are caught up, endgame content is a lot of fun and fairly challenging if you go into higher difficulties, but thanks to game sync and a lot of enthusiastic vets wanting to show their newer friends at least some fragment of what they went through when patches were current, it's fairly easy to say...
Take your time! Play it like it's a normal RPG. Enjoy yourself, just immerse into the worldbuilding and don't worry about the massive undertaking. I think when I first started I just explored around and did stupid stuff so much I ended up in ARR for a year (Heavensward had just come out and this was before the first time they trimmed down the Realm Reborn quests, I would never expect someone to hang out at level 50 this long in 2024 haha). I know it feels like such a weird take for all of the MSQ to be mandatory, but it really is all so so important. Not down to the details necessarily, but more to build up your experiences as you grow as an adventurer. The story plays a lot on the long haul and the humble beginnings from which you came, and it does actually give you nods and validation for remembering the small stuff that can feel really magical when you take your time.
Protip in terms of filtering out side quests though! If it has a picture when you click the npc, it probably has a better multiquest story. If it doesn't it's likely fetch. :)
Oh goodness this ended up long, sorry about that. Welcome to Eorzea, hope you have a good time!
What do you need a list of quests for if the game tells you which ones are important already? Meteor quest? Do. Blue quest? Do. Yellow quest? I meannnnnnn if you want to
u r totally correct about the level 50 brick wall - im currently in the middle of this ocean atm and i want it to end..
New players have it easy.. when FXIV first came back half the quests we did was get a cup a tea, or this or that even before the main story quest showed up, in recent patches etc they got rid of most of the filler quests as I call them.
Been playing since september, and i finished the story, and 100% share your feelings that a lot if is bloat, unimportant, sub stretching. It is true, ive been playing for a few months but i really only did story, and let me tell ypu how it goes, at this point you're at "the great filter" of post A Realm Reborn quests. These are horrible to get through, but they ACTUALLY ARE important, even in the last few moments of the game. Its a weird situation, at some point you realise the kind of quests you can skip and what not to, it takes a little practice >-
With dawntrail coming up. I think it would perfect for new players to use a story skip, and then go back and play the story.
I recall at a certain point, i got fed up with all the unvoiced fetch quests post-ARR and started skipping everything until Heavensward. Maybe I'm blissfully unaware, but i feel like i started heavenward and still understood what was going on in the plot. That was years and years ago though, and i know they've trimmed a lot of the fat from that part in patches.
heavensward is more or less the only expansion you can do this however, after that all MSQ start to feed into each other. There's an internal reason for that but more or less HW was the only MSQ that sort of was a contained story
I like to consider going through the MSQ as reading a fantasy book series, the first book has alot of introductions to do, characters, the world, its history, the relationships and dealings between people, and it introduces You to these people. It's the foundation that the rest of the book series need to stand on.
Is it for everyone? No. Can it be a slog? Yes, especially if you're not into those things.
I'm one of those who went through lvl 1-50 10 years ago, back then the ARR story was even longer. I remember a quest about chocobos being smelly... I do enjoy stories, but yeah... The story didn't grab me at first really and I only kept 1 eye on it except for some few parts, think around lvl 38ish MSQ or so it really slapped me in the face and I've payed attention since😂.
Being honest
Played arr quests last year January February
Realm reborn, skip it if you want, but do watch a video about the story so far there so you don't go blind into heavensward.
Heavensward is top1 or 2 of best story in the game, so try your best to keep up with the slow start of the first 10 quests then you'll start to get engaged into it
GIRL, this community seems to have a huge issue with admitting anything is wrong with their game and you get told you're wrong anytime you point any flaw out, so I cannot talk to ANYONE bout this stuff you're talking about. I had people insisting the quests i've been doing in shadowbringers don't have any filler and that there aren't any quest that aren't important or fetchy, but i'm halfway into what is supposed to be the best expansion in the game and while important things ARE happening it's more of repetitive overview of the important events where i'm shouting 'OBVIOUSLY, WE KNOW, LET'S MOVE ON PLEASE" while some girl shouts "LA HEE" over and over in the background music, and tidbits sprinkled here and there while I do fetch filler quests for ferries and mole people. It's like every single aetheryte I come to has a new group of people that want me to water their plants or carry a bucket and it's INSANE how much filler and fetch there is for the so called best expansion in the game. When can we stop sugar coating and really talk about how much nonsense there is in between the three important words they say every 10 dialogue boxes, there could be some major condensing done while not ruining the story, especially with 10 years of content to get through, i'm getting exhausted and I just want the sense of wonder and less walking around listening to urianger say something pretentiously in 3 paragraphs that could be said in a couple sentences with smaller words.
@Slukke ALSO, at what point in any of that did I say I didn’t enjoy the major plot beats? I pay attention 100% of the time and super enjoy when it comes through, nothing I said was related to anything except pacing
Hi there, I won't rehash stuff that others have already said in the many comments here but I will say playing through all the quests, and side quests, reading everything as i do, made me grow more emotionally attached and invested in a lot of the major characters. They make you realize some of the rather human qualities of various characters, and at time bring you back down to earth with a humble moment. Try to have some friends go with you, or at least to chat to if things become too tedious. It gets better, trust me I played through, what the community calls, the 7th astral slog before they did any sliming down. Back when it was like 60+ quests between the end of ARR and the starts of HW. On a different note, i love your avatar, its so smooth and the animations are great, and also not riddles with some of the more over-the-top designs and movement.
solution: buy a boost, replay the sotry at your own pace at a later date.
It is not that they are story critical it is that they are Mandatory and you cant advance the game with out completing EVERY SINGLE MSQ and there is no Skip to current expac button.
The level 50 pre HW wall isn't as bad as it used to be. You can bang that out in couple of days watching and reading everything. It used to take way, way longer. There used to be more quests and you couldn't fly during it.
I do however agree on one point. For new players FF14 is very daunting cause you have SO MUCH MSQ to chew through before you can be "caught up" with any friends you may have or make who are already done with Endwalker. The MSQ is both wonderful and a huge barrier for new people. I'm not quite sure how they could fix this. So far the only "fix" is buying skips.
The msq isn't skippable tho. you can skip entire xpacs, but not individual quests.
They need to bite the bullet and go in an re-do ARR cut scenes with more audio. People forget cause after the success of ARR, the followup expansions all had TONS more audio cut scenes, but in the main game of ARR, the vast majority of cut scenes are still just paragraphs apon paragraphs apon paragraphs apon paragraphs of reading.
i don't think its about every quest being a banger, moreover that there are things in admittedly most quests, not necessarily every one that have importance later. og ff14 was a massive dumpster fire and even with realm reborn and the cutting in the 5.3 update, there's still a MASSIVE amount of things trying to recontextualize and simmer down the wall of "required" reading to get to the more cohesive and (imo) enjoyable writing. realm reborn was yoshi p trying his best to recover what he could and at 5.3 doing his and the teams best to trim it down well after the fact. where heavensward starts with trying to work with what's already there and move forward to the second half where new things can start being woven in and so on into stormblood, shadowbringers, endwalker, now dawntrail, and onward into the future. unfortunately ff14 is one of those things that, having been out so long, just takes time. but at the end, if you've stuck through getting invested, it is very worth it with the payoffs and callbacks. now that said, its not for everyone and that's okay too, it is DEFINITELY a huge ask for time investment, and even with knowledge from vets that free trial now has up through stormblood, there are still limitations that hinder the experience
many will say "pay 100% attention the whole way through" but having gone through myself to shepherd friends through and playing myself originally, there are definitely peaks and valleys (and i played long before the 5.3 quest cuts and changes which...there have been changes on both sides of the spectrum of agree and disagree) and its very hard to say without spoils but there are plenty of spots you can get away with a cursory skim over whats going on. i apologize for the word wall and the struggle this game puts you or anyone through but i'd like to say it'll be worth it at the end
Vets were correct, every MSQ is important. ARR is only like 50 hours for the whole MSQ. You aren't being gaslit, play it or don't.
MSQ was supposed to be done in blocks, not a marathon of 4 expansions+patches in one go.
new people to the game try to power through everything and literally burn themselves out thinking its world of warcraft and you need to level to max and do endgame.
The content.. is the story. Take your time, experience stuff at relative level (Arr extremes at 50 ect ect) and just have fun.
6 year player here. Ive been doing new game plus recently on ARR, I think the reasons are:
1. No voice acting. Reading takes a lot of effort esp if what you are reading isnt action packed/erotic or emotional.
2. Most dialogue are world building and showing you how the cultures, peoples etc work. Most dont find that interesting as main story.
3. 14 is very linear and most modern games esp mmos are not anymore. People just want to get to the good part or action asap.
4. FOMO so people blaze through to catchup and get fatigued.
5. Game is designed and balanced for first time MMO players, veteran players feel underchallenged and find the pacing slow.
I started a year ago and ARR was a slog and apparently it was worse years ago.
I can see why new people can hate it. Hell i hate when i make a new character on a different data center to player with friends
yeah i kinda hope they change how story and end game progression goes works. The ARR quests already been revamped not once but twice. I hope they can do something about msq, it's ridiculous how long it's gotten. I would love to do like a quest movie (yes quest movie), that concludes and explains everything of the expansion. Give more options to give players how to enroll the game since it literally takes almost an month to get threw content to content (non stop grind of quests) for roughliy a few hours a day. I would like SE to work on something like a major event of story telling to complete expansion instead of doing thousand of quests per expansion (when literally 25% of them quests are fetch quests and unimportant information to the story) but still have to level your classes up to get through "expansion levels".
Who knows maybe with Dawntrail they see in the future where you make path choices of type of story. Like ARR - Endwalker: (The Origins of Primals basically) and Dawntrail - (future expansions): (The New Adventure). But if starting in Dawntrail you get massive xp growth to make up lack of abilities staarting on.
Either way MSQ will def need to be "reconsidered" or "reworked" on current path, they def have to be change that. I get it FF a story driven game but let be real, you can only revamp/rework so much after you scratch out fetch quests.
i know it is a controversial take but i skip all non voice acted quests. I can still keep up with the story pretty well doing that,
As someone who started playing about 3 years ago. THE BEST WAY to look into it is *what do you want your audience to join you with*?? There are some FFXIV streamers focus on Story content (which is those who say every quest is important). Those who focus more on Dungeons/Trials/Raids. Achievement hunters. You name it they pretty much exist. There's no real wrong way to go about it.
Personal opinion - the Post ARR quests *are* hard to get through. Sometimes it is helpful to have an audience to get you through it so you don't get annoyed. I had the same struggle with Stormblood expansion. Heavensward and Shadowbringers are very *heavy* story focused expansions, which is why they get such critical acclaim for what they have. So I would say take a moment and figure out what do you wanna share with your stream (do you want to say do msq offline till you get to a trial or dungeon flagged quest?) Maybe get a poll of feedback from your audiene and find out what they want to watch.
HOPE THAT HELPS!!!
i appreciate the advice... it is tough to decide what to show folks... so far i've been doing some girl math with what quests have cool names, unlock stuff, and which ones seem to conclude a quest "chain". worst case, i'll re-watch the cutscenes with folks on stream later.
FFXIV really is primarily an RPG, I started doing the story, made some friends who had finished it and thought it would be nice to do current content as it came out with them. There was a spreadsheet with every expansion how many hours of cutscenes, dialogue, how long the quest should take, and it put me at hundreds of hours of catchup time.
Since my interested in FFXIV was as a MMORPG primary and not RPG primary, I story skipped and don't regret it because I met a lot of great people that I could actually do things with.
Veteran's are very quick to forget about just how much time it takes to get through the MSQ, what was boring and what was not.
Honestly the story doesn't even begin until Stormblood and even then only the last bits setting up Shadowbringers have any real importance.
As a long time player how I have come to see the MSQ is like threads, as you tie those threads together you will see the full tapestry that is the story, A lot of side quests are just that little bits of information that add to the area. For instance doing side quests around the Limsa Lominsa area will give you more information and knowledge about how things work there. Also I tend to make new characters every other year to go through the Main story again too see changes that the devs have made to the early game being 2.0 and 3.0.
find the quest with picture on the description
Hello MrsMoth, I've been playing FFXIV for 5 years now and I will be honest people will say that most story quests are mission critical because it ties towards characters that will later on be important. What I will say that yes, the story is very long It took me almost more than a month to get past ARR but that is while I am working and reading all the dialog, around 2.0 there are what I'd like to call "filler quests" that are not important. A Realm Reborn ends around level 50, then you are guided to Heavensward. Square Enix has noticed this problem with A Realm Reborn being very long for new players so they cut half of the "filler content" and it is not so long anymore. I will say that in this order your "Job quests" is the most important quests, then Story Quests are the second important, and Blue Quests you will see around as they unlock Dungeons and More. You can ignore the side quests as they are not important! I hope you manage to get through and have fun! Please do not burn yourself out as you can do other stuff as well than grind story! I hope this helps.
Also just started playing very recently and so far I'm having an absolute blast. I've been bringing the MSQ to unlock dungeons and some of the more multi-player oriented content; but I think it's important to remember that it's an MMO, which means it is meant to be played over the course of a long time. I'm not a streamer and I'm a pretty casual player, so our needs and desires are probably different; but you should feel comfortable playing the game how _you_ want and at _your_ own pace. As you've said: not all of the MSQ quests are extraordinarily interesting or engaging; but I feel like there have been plenty of parts in the MSQ so far that act as a good point to break away and do sidequests to level up alt classes or just catch your breath and experience other things.
Around level 35 in ARR it starts getting better but honestly most of ARR is just not good. It does lay a foundation for the next expansions but I would do the quests where u meet everyone around level 15 then skip to level 35 and go from there. You can go back and show cutscenes you need to from the book at the Inn. Once you hear everyone's voice actors change (after base ARR) the game starts getting "good" its like whiplash. From there you are probably ok to do most quests on stream. The game does take its time laying foundations for story though. I quit twice in ARR not understanding why the game is good. Just get past ARR things will be just fine.
I started playing FFXIV last year, quit 3 times and came back to give it another shot during the holidays. Grinded the MSQ and the Job quests 3 days straight and reached level 50. On reaching level 50 the real game revealed itself and stuff started unlocking one after another, and now I am hooked. So I guess grinding till your character reaches level 50 might be a good idea. Also, crafting is so insane in this game, I have never seen a crafting system implemented with such depth in any game. Also, I really din't care about the story before, but now things might be getting interesting. A realm reborn is just world building, real stuff happens after that, it might be a good idea to stick with it until a realm reborn is finished.
I 100% think someone with more energy then I should make a "stream worth" list of quests. I think that what a lot of the " everything is important" crowd doesn't understand is that the vast majority of viewer for a FF14 stream don't care about the cool tiny calls back or the excellent hero's journey. They want to experience a streamers reaction to the highlights of a journey they don't have the patience for.
I also have to agree that no one remembers ARR, that's why the devs already removed like 50% of it XD.
As a streamer the only downside to skipping to the " Many cuts scenes will play at once" moments is have to catch the audience up on what happened off stream.
Hey, I'm also really new! I only started a month or so ago. I had a ton of frustrations with the pacing of the MSQ, and it was only the promise of unlocking more stuff with friends that got me through. Until I started to get to the end of the main story of ARR. Right after unlocking the Howling Eye it started to kind of slap? The pacing isn't perfect from there, but it only improves. Characters are suddenly more interesting. I'm currently in the Big Wall of Lvl. 50, and it looks so much worse than it is. The pacing of all these little mini-arcs is great, and each individual one is pretty quick. I'm so glad you like the game!
Reading these comments is frustrating, because a lot of the "take it easy / it's a marathon, not a sprint / play at your own pace" advice is null when you are a streamer. Like, they're literally playing, in large part, to entertain an audience. And they're absolutely right, the early parts of the game are just not very entertaining.
I love the story dearly with all my heart... but to say 100% of the ARR patch quests are worth reading is bogus lol. There's a reason they cut down those quests, and the community still wants them to be cut down further. Getting a friend to play the game is so hard when the ARR quests are so dudzy
The 30-35 quest chain is rather tedious even after they shortened it down by like a third. As for all the level 50 quests, a bunch of them get set up later plot points or introduce characters who will be semi-important later.
But yes, ARR or 2.X is quite the slog to get through, the pacing does get better once you start hitting the Heavensward build up quests in the 2.4 "Dreams of Ice" patch quests.
So t he best advice I can give is to remember it's a marathon, not a sprint, and to treat it more like you would a single player RPG in terms of the story and less like an MMO, for all the good and bad that it brings.
The real pain of ARR is that the game genuinely does a poor job of contextualizing what's important in the moment, so you're 100% correct to have picked up on that. I recently went back and replayed it after being caught up, and I actually enjoyed it like 100x more than I did my first time through, and it was very easy to tell that what made me really enjoy it that second time around was knowing how all the things they were setting up would be paid off later. Unfortunately there's also a bit of a nebulous quality to some of the plot points because they were trying to simultaneously play to the 1.0 players and the 2.0 starters, and they lean a bit too hard toward the interests of the 1.0 crowd, so there's things that get brought up (especially stuff about the ongoing Garlean conflict and the major players involved) that just don't get adequately introduced to the 2.0 starting audience.
It might not be what you're looking to hear, but my advice is to find a way to get invested in the minutiae, because the game's narrative puts a lot of emphasis on the small problems of local communities. Handing out rations or offering encouragement to rando NPCs will not go away, and occasionally does have a solid pay off. I've personally found that getting invested in your Warrior of Light as a character and doing a little bit of RP, getting in their head, etc, really helps with finding investment in the world and the people in it. Because that's honestly the experience the devs are trying to give you. They're not just trying to tell you a story or give you fun content. They want to provide a living, breathing world and they want you to feel like part of it when you're playing. Whether they achieve that effectively is for each person to decide.
As far as curating for your streaming audience goes, there's honestly not a whole lot that can be done. With the MSQ, there's not consistent enough gaps between "big moments" for you to really justify trying to only stream those bits. You kinda have to either make peace with doing some big stuff offline and talking about it on stream later, or make peace with doing it all live.
Anyway good luck, and I'm gonna follow since this video was actually how I found you! Love your vtuber model, by the way! The way she's animated is super cute and satisfying to me somehow lol
I played FFXIV since the 1.0 days up to now with a few hiatus from time to time. Back in ARR and Heavensward days, I used to read every quest texts and watch every cutscenes. But now, I mainly focus on the Main story, the alliance raids quests series and the raiding quests. At some point you got to choose what you find appealing or what's important to you. Many players in FFXIV are very much into knowing every story details and I think that's what they find fun and that's totally fine.
So all in all, choose what you find fun! If you like to put every pieces of the puzzles to get the big reveals later then I suggest you to follow in detail the main story and the class/job quests. If you're more into exploring the world and have a more casual approach to the lore and focus more on the ''good parts'' then put the most focus on voice acting cutscenes. Usually by just watching the cutscenes with voice acting, you don't miss on much of the story and where It leads you next.
Welcome to Final Fantasy 14! Enjoy yourself :)
I will say that while I think I could go through and pick out non critical quests in ARR, Heavensward, and Stormsblood pretty easily tbh
Once you get to shadowbringers and endwalker your stream really will want to watch *every* cutscene
my friend opened map and noped out immediately, too many quests, too many symbols
Just about every single cutscene'd quest and even some inbetween are "mission critical" honestly. Characters you meet early in the game can and do show up in other parts of the game as well even if they seem like a minor character. She said they should cut out half of what is there now, when they already cut the amount of quests out by a third already to reduce the amount new players had to do. What's left was the compromise :/ Those needed to be in the game apparently. They even altered some early game cutscenes as far as I know, from how the game used to be in a further attempt to shorten things up a bit. It is a lot, no denying that. But it's all important, it's best to just take your time and go through it as you play and try not to worry about "how many do I have left to do?" and just do it.
So, here's the problem with the post 50 story quests, they had to stretch for the full length of 2.x. The MSQ ended after Castrum, so everything else was the build up to HW. There used to be A LOT more fluff quests here, they've already trimmed it down from what it used to be. The problem is a lot of critical story beets ARE mixed in with quests that are filler Garbo. You can start a quest that is 95% pointless, except one character will have an explanation in one chat bubble that matters later. TBH I would just do whatever post 50 stuff offline and blast though a lot of it and read up on it before HW. HW has a lot less of the filler crap and the story is better spaced out. Trust me, back in 2.0 when they handed us the post 50 story it was still like trudging though mud, we just didn't have it all at once like new players do so it was less noticeable. It was a problem back then though too. That's part of why we Vets keep saying "oh it gets better in HW" because well... it just does xD.
The level 50 wall of quests is real and can honestly be a bit of a slog. Everything past that though is generally minimal filler or C plots going on. But, what I can say without giving away spoilers is that they have already done multiple rounds of cutting out the quests that don't have an impact on the story. While I wouldn't go so far as to call every quest, especially those in ARR, critical, I can say honestly that those quests still serve a purpose.
My best advice, don't try to binge just MSQ, do other things you enjoy in the game, hang out with friends, take a break and do some roulettes as you begin to unlock them. Do some of the crystal tower series when you're feeling bored of going through the umpteenth trial at level 50. The game has so much to offer, so try not to laser focus on just one thing. Even from a streaming perspective, there is plenty of things to entertain a group while you level. And once you hit Heavensward, it all starts kicking into high gear.
You really just have to find you flow, and everyone is different. While it is all somewhat important, the ones that the story calls back to are few. It's also not easy to tell what quests will be referred back to. The teams behind the game like to plant very tiny seeds in really esoteric places then come back 8 years later to reap that content harvest. XD (*Cough* Crystal Tower *Cough*)
As for the comment on cutting the msq down, they have.. twice... As a new player you are dealing with somewhere less than half of what we who did it all on release had to do. XD
I started skipping almost every cutscene in the msq up to post arr, because I found a 3 hour long story summary of the story up to Heavensward. So I would listen to the portion I skipped through each day I after I finished playing so I would know what I had just been running around doing. Once I got to the very end of post arr I stopped skipping, and I feel totally satisfied with my experience.
I can’t imagine streaming this game though. Having to play a realm reborn AND keep people entertained would be so annoying.
Also yes, it does get really really good once you get to Heavensward. I had a hard time with Stormblood though, because they send you all over the place so I never really got invested in the zones I was playing in.
Also you should definitely not skip Hildibrand but I’m sure you already have people telling you that.
@@pondsmelts yes i've been told lol
Trying to stream your entire MSQ journey is a fool’s errand. Don’t do it. The problem is that until Heavensward, things are very scattershot. A quest may be entirely fluff but have one detail that becomes important for a very important quest later on, or you may have a series of quests that as a whole set up the entire next arc but individually you’re delivering packages. The problem is that there are so many quests, no one is gonna be able to tell you which are “important” without literally spoiling the content for you, because sometimes what is “important” is a side detail, rather than the thing you’re actually doing.
here is my honest take on the main story.
ARR = Meh too damn long, last quest went 180 all the sudden which is good and left me sad.
Heavenward = It was amazing, and I was depressed makes me wanting for more
Stormblood = Meh, kinda boring... still boring.
Shadowbringer = IMMACULATE, PHENOMENAL, LEFT ME EMOTIONAL DAMAGE AND DEPRESSED
Heavensward = IMMACULATE, PHENOMENAL, A PERFECT ENDING OF THE BASE GAME. LEFT ME EMOTIONAL DAMAGE AND DEPRESSED AND VERY HAPPY.
ARR is literally a dog water experience for new players, but once you passed that.. It is an amazing roller coaster going through heavensward... then you just boringly cruise Stormblood then jump straight to an amazing roller coaster experience on Shadowbringers till the end of heavensward.
I don't know or watch you usually, I just got here because youtube thought I should see this. But I will give you the best advice I can, knowing that you are a streamer. The fact that you are a streamer is crucial, because if you weren't I'd tell you to just do what you like about msq. Read it, dont read it, the game has a lot of other stuff to offer. However, since you are a streamer and I *am* a part of ffxiv's audience, I am well aware of what people care about when watching. They don't care about you doing roulettes or side quests or sometimes even raiding. FFXIV players, the people what watch you, watch for your msq reaction and this will be the peak of your viewership while playing the game. Yes, some parts of the msq can get a little dull, but they will be only a quest or two or three at a time, which is why it's hard to say what they are. Even people like me who have spent 15000h in the game can't list the 'boring' quests of the top of their head. But whether they're boring or not, really doesn't matter. They're a part of the msq and people love them. During them, you can interact with your audience, answer their questions and ask them some, maybe joke about the npc's 10 year old gear that looks weird, or give them a funny voice when they have no voice lines and most importantly, show off your personality because at the end of the day, when you are finished and caught up with the msq, that is all you will have left. So to sum it all up, don't be scared of the msq being long, draw it out to keep the viewership high and try to make the slightly dull parts fun, by you being entertaining yourself. Milk that content as long as possible while also working on making your audience like you for who you are, so that once there is no more story content, they don't just leave you for a new streamer starting all over again.
I've just caught up with the MSQ for the very first time after almost 7 years of playing (that is with taking large breaks and I also consider myself 'new' to the game, only ever played RDM, BLM before then, and nothing else my first experience with non combat jobs was about 3 weeks ago) and the main reason I took big breaks was because the story seemed to drag on after you do the 'main' quests for any given xpack.
I think it does get better in later xpacks, most of endwalkers post end game MSQs are around 9 quests per patch which I found was a nice balance. But I think the best middle ground for tackling the MSQs is listen to all of the voiced parts / cut scenes, any text only parts I would just skim read to get the important stuff out of it (normally they will go over said stuff again in cut scenes anyway). Just my two cents tho, good luck on your journey!
Yeah don't try to "catch up." Try to enjoy the experience.
I only started FF14 at the end of Stormblood and the beginning of Shadowbringers. It took me 2 years before I caught up. I mean I literally made it to the end of Shadowbringers a few months before Endwalker...
And there ARE alot of between expansion quests.
But they also give you new jobs that start at lvl 50 or lvl 60 or lvl 70.
If you have leveled your main job to the point where you aren't getting xp, switch jobs for a bit.
But no I don't think they are ALL mission critical to the over all narrative, but from what I understand MSQ cannot be skipped, but since one character can do all jobs, you only ever have to do it once.
Sorry I didn't point this out, but I wasn't playing 2 years straight. I played heavy for like 4-6 months, burnt out and took a year off before finishing.
Tbh, I feel like this community lets the stans have too much sway over their thoughts. I dont think ive ever seen any other gaming community be so fearful of its stans, or fanboys/fangirls if you want a more recognizable term. Usually any other community im a part of tends to laugh or ignore these kinds of people. Idk whats going on in this back and forth with this specific community but its really strange to me. Sorry for the random word vomit, just wanted to share my experience.
Of cause there are Quests in all of RPGs and ARR which are not important, i call Base ARR a "Big Tutorial" and its mission is to provide you a insight into the whole world, lore and characters. Especially when you finished Endwalker you will have another view on ARR which you will not have when you are new. When you feel its not "important" to you, just rush reading the texts and go along, skipping tho is something i do not recommend at all. I'm like 3 years in now and have so much left to do and i will replay ARR when 7.0 hits.
This game needs an overhaul to the new player experience, badly.
I myself call it the A Realm Reborn Wall. I will never deny that they are critical in setting up the dynamics of every character that matters, but it is a slog. Not too mention you essentially have to deal with this with every expansion that they have now. I took long break after finishing Shadowbringers, and came back to Endwalker basically it had finished. I still haven't finished Endwalker because it feels like every plot point is getting dragged out. Don't get me wrong it's a great storyline (Not as good as Shadowbringers thought). Yet it just feels like I'm grudgingly going through it, and I find that I'm not enjoying myself or the story.
Getting a new player past ARR is the worst experience of the game. The overwhelming majority of my friends that I tried to get into FF14 wound up quitting trying to progress through the MSQ. Don't get me wrong- the story is great and it's good that old content is still in the game, but it's absolutely TERRIBLE for bringing in new players.
PS- I started FF14 a few years ago and grinded like CRAZY to get caught up to current content (Shadowbringers at the time). Most of the early content is mediocre at best. As of today with Endwalker you're probably looking at upwards of 300 hours for a full MSQ clear (without messing around).
I remember watching the videos on your vods channel lol
If you are only doing MSQ and watch all the cutscenes, you look forward to about 300-400 hours to finish.
and no not all quests are important.
every quest is certainly critical to understand characters, lore beats, foreshadowing, etc. however, being "critical" does not mean constantly fun or engaging. i love this game but even i can admit that the only traditionally fun aspects of the msq are the dungeons and trials. otherwise 70% of the time you're just in cutscenes with small gimmick quest objectives or instances thrown in now and again.
this game has amazing world building and roleplaying as your character is definitely part of the experience. all the abundance of cutscenes are in favor of storytelling which is fine. in that same regard, if there are sections of the story that don't grab you or, hell even entire expansions (*cough* stormblood), then it can honestly get sorta miserable.
you're not wrong. this game has an msq bloat problem and people who say differently clearly haven't seen the new player perspective in a long time.
forgot to mention another issue which is trying to get friends into this game lmao. it is so hard to get people into this game and believe me i've tried. the msq progression is too awkward for multiple people to enjoy. if you're on an already established character you're gonna do a lot of waiting and listening to your friends ask when it gets good every 5 minutes.
As someone that's been playing XIV for a while, I always warn that some early portions of the MSQ will feel like a drawn out experience. My main issue, outside of not giving any indicators of where to head next without looking to UI elements (Map, minimap, quest log etc) for some of the MSQ is the portion leading up to Titan and the Company of Heroes.
I think they can probably combine several of those into a single quest with multiple steps to reduce the amount of actual fetch quests while still keeping the story elements needed in them. I understand the needed story details in those quests, and I'm not advocating to get rid of the details, but I think they can probably just instead combine the quests into a longer one that give a coffer for a type of gear (Fending Coffer, Striking Coffer, etc) that contains several pieces to make up for the lack of choices. This way, while it would be a noticeably long quest compared to others in the area, it wouldn't be as many quests especially when you can focus the objectives while still getting the story elements needed.
ARR is SOOOOO bloated, my partner is going crazy trying to get through it, i had a big hiatus between ARR and HW when i did the MSQ and shes being road blocked by ishgard in her cooking and other jobs because of the MSQ, it's worth it in the end but it's such a massive barrier to entry and she would have definitely quit before now if i weren't egging her on
It honestly has better pacing if you skip anything that isn't voice acted, even then the back and fourth you do is insane
if you think ARR is bloated.. should be a Legacy player like me .. played the original FFXIV and then played ARR when it first came out there was over 400 MSQ now there is way less then that now,, and ARR when new had over 2K worth of quests ( MSQ, side, class, etc)
it was still more bloated than it is today when i did it back in 2016@@dragoon666
They actually cut down on the A Realm Reborn MSQ length in 2020, during the 5.3 update which was also the update that added flying to ARR zones. It was the first time I ever seen a story get 'improved' after launch by having content forcibly removed from it.
Unfortunately the MSQ even after that culling is still pretty bloated. And every expansion's MSQ has filler segments padding out the entire duration as well. From my personal experience I take about a week to clear the MSQ in an expansion (ARR took me a month, I did it in 4.1 before it got trimmed in 5.3).
General survival tip for MSQ is that 99% of non-voiced cutscenes are usually less important and can be skimmed, especially if you can tell that it's just people standing around and talking rather than doing stuff. If your keyboard has num pad, mashing Num 0 during long dialogue is easier than repeatedly clicking. The rationale for this is that Square Enix has no budget to fully voice the whole thing so only the most important parts are voiced (NOTE: this is only for MSQ quests. Side content quests aren't voice acted, ever.)
Also when people say it gets good later, take it with a pinch of salt and temper your expectations. FFXIV community is famous for being a bit too much of a hype echo chamber sometimes. A lot of the 'good' comes down to epic wow moments, pivotal scenes with voice acting and action and drama. Usually they are moments you sit back and watch, not really the moments you play through such as running to 3 locales on the world map to pick up groceries or kill 10 enemies standing somewhere or find 8 NPCs hiding somewhere and talk to them one by one. It’s a balance of “chores and cutscenes”. You do the chore, you get rewarded with the cutscene and admittedly, some of the cutscenes are the best parts of the story but doesnt change the fact that the chore is there.
Can definitely say, I was not impressed with the ARR MSQ. There is a LOT they can trim from it and leave it still relevant to the story. I don't think I really began to get the "OOH AHH" sensation until somewhere towards the end of Heavensward. Stormblood and beyond is where I really began to enjoy doing the MSQ. Still a lot of filler quests though, kind of wish they'd stop with fillers.
i understand filler, because when it's fresh it needs to breath a little. but it would be nice if they would put some of it into sidequests (maybe replace some of the particularly silly sidequests with that)
Im late to the party, yes, the fans are delusional, all quests may be related to the story, but that doesnt make every single one of them "La macarena" level of good. Theres weak quests, theres boring quests, the usual in every MMO. I think it was hard for you to find a list because nobody really cared about that particular information before you, as most people dont stream and those who stream dont always care as much as you do MoMo. Great video BTW.
Gatekeeping is what it is, one can understand a bit of gatekeeping, but when it literally stop a player from enjoying the game, thats already too much.
Welcome to the FFXIV fandom. I played for a few years and just recently left the game....this video just described the average FFXIV 'fan'. A bit too obsessed with MSQ, a bit too para-social (or just plain horny) with the Scions, a bit too aggressive against criticism...you know....a fandom. There's virtually no difference between a fandom and a cult.
My 2 cents - the game is fun, but MSQ is for JRPG fans. IMHO, it operates on a Pareto principle split, i.e. 20% of the story is 80% of the good parts. There's a reason GMVs are so popular for JRPGs, it's cause it takes out all the effin' filler!
MSQ at lvl 60-70-80 takes for ever! in between those lvl its not that bad but those xpac barrier take 3-4hr each! made me quit couple of times.
Walking simulator
It's an mmorpg but it's structured like a regular game. That lots of people can play together but they have a lot if really important emotional stuff in little bits that pay off later. Which is great if youre someone that's been in it since the beginning but if you're a newbie it's just so much. Like it's over a years worth of content right now.
yes, it's true that it's years of content. i also understand giving folks lots of stuff to do early on. but i also think some of the main quests themselves are a drag
@@MrsMothmom @MrsMothmom I think my comment came across wrong. I meant like MSQ by itself for a newbie without paid skip would take like a year to complete if youre gaming like a couple of hours a few days a week. And IMO that's just too long. They need to modify some of that key quest dialogue into maybe updated longer/additional cutscenes with shorter quests or something as a way of streamlining it because as it stands now if you skip you end up missing those really good bits that really solidify your connection to the npcs. And that sucks since the npcs and their story are what really make it shine and stand out amongst other mmos.Then again Idk if that's even possible. But I just know its rough when I tried to play msq in the past during the shadowbringers craze. I ended up quitting and now there's even more msq so I feel bad for anyone brave enough to forge ahead. It's fine for all the people that started in ARR or HW but people starting past that are sol and it sucks and some restructuring would help the rest of us that don't want to skip.
@@meadowsz5390 Personally, I'd suggest not worrying at all about "catching up" or anything similar. The goal is to enjoy the ride, not finish it. The worst thing you can do is force yourself to do MSQ when you're not in the mood.
Msq is the best part of the entire game. If you dont like doing msq, i think you should quit the game. Ff14 with its huge story is a game you should play and have fun and not "rush" through. Also most msq are important, for the story and to develop a bonding with characters. If you ask if every msq is important its like if you ask which chapters of the lord of the rings books or harry potter books can you skip. Sure not all msq are important but its hard to tell which 1% of all the msq is not important. If you look for an mmorpg with non sense story where you can skip everything, i would recommend world of warcraft, new world etc
It's like 20% not important.
You can legit use a story skip for 1-50 and you won't lose much...just watch a RUclips video of it and you good, Heavenward is where the story starts to get good.
You think it is long? keep in mind that they already cut about the half of what it was! XD
As someone that just did the msq, be warned: the 1-50 and reach heavensward takes about one month if you play 8 hours a day.
Any quest with a + on it (also they are blue) are quests that unlocks stuff (like importan job actions, dungeons and other stuff)
Any other quest that is in golden are sidequest that are optional, some add to the context f what is going on the map.
Any advise? Try to have someone that knows where you can stop questing for your streams.
The level 50 quests ... I remember I was so burnt out by the absurd number of quests between the end of ARR and the beginning of Heavensward that I actually gave up on the game. Luckily I came back later, and I can confidently say that from Heavensward onwards, it gets way better. Especially Heavensward and Shadowbringers. But I absolutely feel like there's waaaay too many quests through ARR and the post ARR content. I seriously think the point could be brought across without the hundreds of trivial tasks under the MSQ.
i haven't played them yet, but from here i wonder how many could just be made optional...
cut half hell no the story takes it time and builds up to the ending and a lot of stuff like 20 or 30 that u don't care about come back like 70 and your like omg wow just making those numbers up but u get what I'm talking about
played for about 35 hours, could not force myself to play any more of this game. bit of a slog.
As for "when it gets good," around level 51. The level 50 wall is real, and sucks, but the expansion stories are noticeably *tighter* than ARR. Much less running off to do chores for random bartenders. As others have said, ARR's story has ALREADY been condensed-- they stripped about a big chunk of it a while back because, as stated here, it's incredibly bloated. There's just only so much they could remove without leaving gaps in the plot.
Of course, if you're not enjoying the story... you probably shouldn't be playing 14. It's basically a single-player RPG with co-op segments, more than a full-on MMO. The story is the point, and if Heavensward doesn't hook you then it's probably not worth continuing beyond that.
honestly the "it gets better around heavensward" is such a lie, it does not, infact, the first half of heavensward kinda gets worse, don't even get me started on the fucking moogle quests, they were not fun, and not even in the slightest were they needed, if there's one set of quests that should be removed to make HW better, it's those.
I'd say it gets better around post heavensward, that's when they bring in the shadowbringers writer and hence, the story *actually* goes somewhere interesting.
10000000% correct here
I think your problem is you are trying to speed through 10 years of story telling Yes it's a lot, no that's not a bad thing. It's a feature not a bug.
I thought it was good from the beginning, and I only started solidly playing about five years ago. Granted, I came from WoW, where early on the whole darn thing is a back to back stream of fetch quests with a few unique one spattered in and very little story to speak of. I can remember nearly the entire main story of FFXIV. For WoW.... hold on, I'll have to look it up for you. *shrug* But I also like story driven games, so I guess it might not feel that way to people who didn't come for a story. It's a Final Fantasy game, epic story is kind of their thing.
But honestly, from what I've seen of what this game came from, even up to lvl 50 is way better then it started out as if you can just roll with it and have fun.
And it's hands down way better then early Guild Wars 2 or WoW where they make you wait for what feels like forever to actually do anything more than a bunch of fetch quests.
I remember feeling like I had to grind in WoW for horrible lengths of time. Playing the MSQ for FFXIV, there was very little grinding actually involved. Early on most of the MSQ keeps you rolling pretty quickly along.
And no, not every single quest is super important. If you just want a bit of cool lore tidbits and and occasionally funny NPC reactions, go play the side quest scattered around darn near every zone. They often do a good job of fleshing out the world the game takes place in.
But yes, the main story quest is the primary vehicle for moving the game along.
Hear me out, don't stress over it honestly.
It's a journey with others, make jokes, have fun with it, soak it up.
If those not so great parts weren't there, you wouldn't know what was great when it comes up and the story bits make sense later on.
Like with most fantasy stuff, you're starting out as a normal person with a hidden calling. Then a few episodes in, power spike, then a few more, major plot. Next thing you know, these side characters getting you to save the world are your family, and it's just explodes exponentially for them and you because suddenly an unexpected tier 5 plot comes out and melts your brain you didn't know you'd love you were apart of.
hi, i myself am new to this game too (almost getting into level 50). and i sure get what you are saying. i do love the game and i do love the story, but what bothers me either it's the overall writing' structure. it's heavy for new kind of generations of players, and it's soo prolix. i was willing to play it nonstop this year, but the game forces me to take breaks between each expantions. also, i am from brazil, and read all that dialogue in that "antique" english though... it's tough lol.
yes the language and walls of text can be brutal (i'm dyslexic so it's rough on me). i think sometimes the story feels like it missing important details and instead sending me on a tangent. i wish it felt a bit more focused, early on...
and i 100% agree about the feeling of wanting to play, but having to come to a halt to deal with msq. waiting around for them to give me access to stuff is frustrating.
The old style English and pirate talk does stop in later story, its a writing style that was put in place during the 1.0 era that they tried to keep for a while. The DEVs and localization team agreed that it was a bit much especially for one rather well read character (You most likely know) so they started to take a step back from it all. Its pretty heavy in ARR, but it will get easier.
I started playing in October and have just now caught up on MSQ. I was prepared for how tedious ARR would be, but what I was not prepared for was the other instances of poor pacing/lulls in the story. All of the main Stormblood MSQ (not including the patches) and parts of Endwalker were an absolute slog to get through. We just triggered some star ending calamity and we're visiting rabbits on the moon for several hours? All in all the story has been great, but it is a huge time commitment and you aren't gonna have fun for part of it.
in the end the devs are not just writing story, they're giving people things to do. when new stuff comes out, and there are new things to do, anyone going through the old stuff ALSO has to dredge through the "busywork". not my fav.
Let's not change the entire game so some flash in the pan tourist Vtuber can entertain "her" 5 viewers.
sad thing is ARR MSQ use to be longer, they shortened it by maybe 5 less hours removing a lot of fetch quest parts in between.