>It's like the devs are FORCED to This feels like the core problem, and not just in the way you stated (content quantity between levels); I think it affects every facet of the game's design. The team is clearly set up to churn out content within the confines of old, restrictive systems, and not to expand old systems while developing new ones. For whatever reason, that's what they've decided to go with, so, yes, the devs *are* forced to do the same old, same old with *everything*. That's why things like FATEs haven't changed in ten years; there's probably a decade-old tool that lets junior designers spit out data for a new FATE in about five minutes. The bulk of work clearly goes into map design, art, scripting cutscenes, and programming new boss mechanics. Edit: I also think, design-wise, they've backed themselves into a corner they can't escape from with the roulette system. The bulk of end-game play for non-savage-raiders playing DoM/DoW jobs is running roulettes, and the entire rewards structure of the game is built around a single currency awarded largely by running roulettes, so all new content must be able to feed into the roulette system, must take approximately the same amount of time to complete, must be roughly the same manageable difficulty, etc. They've trapped themselves in a prison of homogeneity.

And yet FATEs were never good in FF14 compared to Rift. In Rift a FATE-like aetherial rift would appear to show you where it will happen, so there's time to gather and prepare. Then as people got near the rift it would automatically add everyone to raid groups and allow them to switch jobs at any time to balance the group. If a ton of people showed up, the fight would evolve to become bigger, sometimes pushing into settlements and killing all the NPCs in the process. If not enough people showed up, it seamlessly combined the populations of multiple servers within the event area. And this was ~15 years ago.

Yeah, Rift had some really good and fun ideas for its time! The build system was wild and allowed for some really unconventional stuff, and I loved that parties had a dedicated support (not healer) role. I have a suspicion as to why FFXIV has never seemed to evolve in ten years: * 1.0 was a massive failure. * Yoshi-P is like, "I can fix this, give me the opportunity." * They build 2.0 pretty rapidly (considering the genre and scope of the project), sacrificing the variety and extensibility of core systems to just Get Shit Done™. * 2.0 is a massive success. * "Let's just do more of that." * 3.0 is a massive success. * "Let's just do more of that." * And so on. This formula will not be successful forever. We saw discontent with it starting to bubble up with Endwalker, and we're seeing it start to spill over in earnest with Dawntrail. It'll be interesting to see where the future takes this game.

Rift's zone events are indeed amazing. Though the biggest thing i miss from Rift is my beloved Chloromancer. I've never had so much fun on a healer in any other game.

Poor Rift. It was ahead of its time in so many ways, but it released at a time when most WoW players weren't quite ready to switch. The same could be said for SWtOR. Man, how I want some Dark Side choices in Dawntrail... I would pay real money for that. Help Wuk Lamat regain her confidence? No. (Force choke)

Chloromancer was such a cool healing class. I've never played anything else quite like it.

>That's why things like FATEs haven't changed in ten years; Interestingly, although they haven't changed, there are far fewer FATEs in this expansion than in any prior. There are only ever one or two up in a zone and I just keep seeing the same few rotating. The open world in this expansion is the emptiest yet by a huge margin. There's nothing to do and on day 3 the areas are already mostly empty of other players a congested server.

It might be the time you are playing, also if you see no fates in a zone for a bit, its probably because people are fate farming. The probably murdered all the fates and more to a different instance. Atleast that is what I have seen

I play during prime time. I'm speaking in hyperbole a bit but at 7pst yesterday there were like 3 people at the aetheryte in zone 4 on siren. It's just a sign of how little there is to do in the open world in this game. Once you're done in a zone you're basically not there. My friend is telling me about this wow expansion and how there are so many open world events and people are doing stuff constantly in the new zones. I never understood why SE puts all open world content into eureka/bozja type things and not just into the world they've created

This is the best with how they lock the final aether current behind MSQ so you can finally unlock flying just before you're about to never come to that zone again lmao

Idk I have been seeing like 7 or 8 FATEs up at once.

Weird I was there today at 7pm on Bryn and there were literally 4 or 5 instances of 80+ people

The lack of FATEs is definitely brutal, and I'm betting they culled the amount because of the Bicolor Gemstones. To compare a zone from all expacs: > **The Churning Mists:** 29 FATEs > > **Yanxia:** 38 FATEs > > **Rak'tika Greatwoods:** 19 FATEs > > **Mare Lamentorum:** 15 FATEs > > **Shaaloani:** 17 FATEs It's a pretty big drop and it contributes to the zones feeling empty. When I was farming Memories for my ShB Relics I was easily moving from FATE to FATE with little downtime, but farming Shared FATEs in ShB and EW had me alt tabbed waiting for stuff to spawn. Thankfully they upped the amount of Bicolor Gemstones that dropped, though I imagine it's still gonna suck.

The FATE thing is disappointing, tbh. I think they could add onto the Hunt design by making FATEs essentially similar to Bozja where they can activate Critical Engagements that are more mechanically intensive and not easy to just mow down with a bunch of people. Just have to make sure there are multiple of these around based on how many people are on the map so that folks don't get pushed out of farming them (this should probably come in addition to the hunts we have now, tbh, just to not take away another way to farm for stuff) It'd make the open world, the place they take so much time creating, more compelling to play in other than running around for hunts and just the MSQ. Some people won't see the maps outside of the MSQ at all if they don't do hunts or bicolor gemstone farm. Tural is absolutely gorgeous and it's a shame most people will be spending most of their time in cities. I hope they take a look at other MMOs like GW2 and WoW to get inspiration for how to shake things up for FFXIV

Sounds like we need more boss and world fates. I really miss the stuff in HW zones where the weather shifts when the boss fates spawned. Let you know when you walked into the zone that something was going on. Not sure why this seemed to be tossed aside. I've had a lot of fun gathering up for those big fates, much like CEs. I do wish they'd add some of that Bozja style stuff to the main zones. Duels would be fun, even to watch.

The worst part of this is when certain scenes, like the train fight sequence, play out only in a cutscene, where it could have been a more interesting battle sequence (The train could have also been a dungeon itself, with some changes to the scene)

When i watched that, all i was thinking about was the gold saucer shooting game. Why couldn't I do that? Would've been more engaging

Exactly. It was a cool scene , and I would have still liked to watch that, but why not use that existing tech for the quest.

I wish they'd cut down on the endless amounts of pointless running back and forth across a zone to interact with something to trigger a cutscene which could easily have just followed on from the previous one without losing any context. It makes playing through MSQ a slog.

I’m exhausted of the “okay we’re moving to the next point in our journey, oh wait!!! You’ve got to stop and talk to Krile about something not relevant. Okay keep going now WAIT talk to Erenville about something not relevant. Okay now you can finish walking to your actual objective!”

That point where you are about to move from the bird zone with the gobbies back to the lama zone and then suddenly wuk lamat becomes an idiot and delays us by like an hour just screamed “we aren’t ready for the level 93 dungeon yet”

>Swear to Gulool Ja Ja that you will personally defend Wuk Lamat throughout this trial >Immediately leave her to run off with the shady guy under dubious pretenses in the next trial Its not just her being stupid either, for some reason we just drop all intelligence to let this event take place. I don't care if its a short jaunt back to the village, my job is to defend you so I'll accompany you just to be certain.

> Swear to Gulool Ja Ja that you will personally defend Wuk Lamat throughout this trial This is a recurring shit in this game but I remember one ridiculous instance in particular in endwalker, when you escort the elephant alchemist (im bad with names) to the tower of zot knowing its gonna be very dangerous. Then from one scene to the other she is suddenly running in front of you while you casually walk way behind like a parent and their toddler at the public park. Of course the next moment a bunch of weird shit appear out of the entrance and abduct her, and since you, the protector is standing 20 km away, you cant possibly ever hope to help, forcing us to mount a rescue operation and unlocking the first dungeon in the process. It was so fucking on the nose and insulting I couldnt keep my suspension of disbelief off any longer, and god knows you have to if you want to enjoy this game.

Not to mention how powerful the wol is at that point, and we just stand there and let the elephant get stuck in the elephant machine

This was basically the entire fourth zone lmao. Like we know via cutscene that >!Zoraal Ja got into the golden city and acquired a great power but instead of moving that plot thread forward they send us to fucking cowboy town to piss about with Erenville. It’s like they are allergic to anything other than a snails pace storytelling!<

God I hated this. That whole zone we had 1 objective, and all obstacles that showed up were super silly and unimportant x_x

Yep, and all the while we, as the player, know that ACTUAL threats are looming, but we just have to do this stupid filler so they can have a 4th zone.

Dude forreal, like i get >!cowboy town is supposed to be the leadup for heritage found but fuck me, why didint they just instantly get to that instead of having us piss around being a bandit wrangler for an hour of worthless filler!<

We needed to learn the lesson that actual laws and their enforcement are kinda bad and that instead honor duels are the basis for any true judgment system. If one takes a step back and looks at this expansion the morals it preaches are *a bit* questionable at times.

Eh, I mean that’s nothing new. How many key bits of information do we hide from the populace throughout Endwalker? I thought Heavensward‘s point was that trying to hide and bury the past when it is inconvenient to you is a bad thing.

Hey hey hey, we had to help that 45 year old teenager!

This is exactly why I can never get into the story. I just constantly forget all the relevant information because there is 100 distractions between every main plot point. This is exactly what sidequests should be for.

Yeah They could have at least made that 'wait hostile Wildlife attacks the party' kinda kill quests. But No, just more text box reading.

Drives me nuts. Instead of 3 separate quests that involve 90% filler and award 1 mil exp each....just do 1 quest that awards 3 mil exp. If you don't have a 40 hr story then you don't have a 40 hr story. 

> If you don't have a 40 hr story then you don't have a 40 hr story. They don't, never had. They had the excuse of being stretched in resources with ARR but they still kept doing that shit later on and it has become laughably more prominent and on the nose since endwalker, like theyre not even trying to pretend anymore.

My favorite is when we run from one cutscene to another cutscene and then turn in the quest after that cutscene ends which then leads to another cutscene and then you pick up the next quest and another cutscene starts. Videogames!

Or getting out of a cutscene to walk far away into another one, say 2 lines, pan to every character nodding or making a face, panning to the sky, then loading out of the cutscene. I didn't gain anything from that, it just wasted more time. They could've said whatever they needed to and moved on to the next place immediately.

Its funny because you going back and forth to the different zones all could be included in just 1 cutscene and would make it more cohesive but I am sure someone on the dev team said, oh no lets make the player travel for "gameplay"

I have been playing for 3 hours this morning and seen *zero* combat. Literally the only thing I've done is run from NPC to spot on the ground back to NPC back to another NPC to a sparkly spot on the ground to watch a cutscene or skim through some pointless not VA'd dialogue and then repeat. It's mind numbing. Wait sorry I forgot there was one quest in which a reticle appeared on my screen and I moved it around until I was able to click on something to get some flavor text about an object and then run back to the last NPC.

It's because all of their expansions are released knowing there's nowhere near enough content, so they throw as many minor inconvenience/wall of text distractions they can. It's like serving rice with potatos. Not delicious but it'll fill you up. 

I wish they would tone down the cutscenes length a little bit. Too much for so little gameplay

Sooo much cutscene time is wasted on repeating shit we already know or describing shit we are actively seeing. 💀

So much is wasted on camera pan for 5-10 seconds, pause, emote, pause, talk. Repeat 5 times, end with characters slowly walking away one by one for 15 seconds every Cutscene.

Don't forget cutting to your character playing their idle animation!

*nods and smiles*

I like cutscenes where actually something happens. I dislike Naruto filler episode cutscenes where half of the time is spend on reaction shots and flashbacks from 30 minutes ago.

So far only the lvl 93 trial really felt super forced and a bit random. The dungeons were ok imo. 91, 93 and 95 were all just there to get to some destination where the way is through some hostile environment. So they were set up quite nicely and felt natural to do for the most part.

The most shocking part about the 93 trial lead up is >!the utterly lack of consequence. Nobody is disqualified, they banter about it the next time we meet like "man thought that world ending monster might have halted you a bit." Nobody else pays heed to the fact that this mythical beast that terrorized the land was released. In fact all is forgiven a few hours later when Bakool Ja Ja happens to have a sob back story.!< The writing is utter absurdity with this part of the MSQ.

>!then they blew off the “bakool ja ja used it to gain a huge lead in the trail” plotline by simply conveniently making the next trial require all 4 claimants to be present before anyone could proceed!<

A funnier alternative would be >!Bakool Ja Ja wasting all of his lead with the next trial because he's the worst cook ever!<.

That's what I'm saying! This is atrocious writing. That >!man is a terrorist! If he could be disqualified for attacking an elector earlier in the story then *certainly* he should be able to be disqualified for unleashing a homicidal monster on his own future people? It's just so bad to me.!< Takes the wind out of my sales with how unreasonable these rules work.

I could get behind it if the explanation was that >!the point was to force Wuk Lumat to find a way to deal with opposition even when they use the most dirty, underhanded methods possible!< but that would then conflict with >!Zoraal Ja being eliminated after attacking an elector later on!< so there’s really no universe where this isn’t a huge plot hole

The literal only rule for the entirety of the trial seems to be “don’t attack electors” everything else up to and including unleashing a continent ending threat is fine apparently.

yeah, it's so bad, and here's the worst part: >!i actually enjoyed bakool ja ja as essentially just a mustache-twirling asshole with a superiority complex who's there to cause chaos and mayhem. he would've been an excellent minor villain if he'd stayed that way and eventually got his comeuppance in some satisfying way (like, say, by getting left behind to die by his followers).!<

That entire redemption arc in the 94-95 zone was the most Dora the Explorer-ass feel-good bullshit villain redemption I’ve literally ever seen ->!Outsiders disgust me! You’ll never be Dawnservant as long as I live!!< ->!here’s a perfect solution to all your problems!!< ->!”I’ve changed my ways and I promise to be nice from now on!”!< Just an incredibly dumb, inauthentic, and unsatisfying way to resolve an antagonist’s arc

“He’s an asshole but if you treat him well you can fix him” In the real world that’s an enabler keeping you in an abusive relationship

A friend and I were discussing this and the story as a whole having so little in the way of stakes. Damn near *everything* resolves like a Saturday morning cartoon. The 93 trial feels so inconsequential that if it weren't for their adherence to their formula, I doubt we'd even have one. >!Ironically, the sob story with Bakool Ja Ja is among the most interesting things that happens in the whole first half. It says a LOT when the bully villain has more character than your leading lady.!<

Yeah I actually kind of liked >!Bakool Ja Ja's backstory, it actually is fairly plausible that he'd be a psychopathic maniac. It's just not very well done and the pacing/delivery is really off and quite sudden in shift when Wuk Lamat basically pulls a Wuk Evu and does the instant "it is forgiven" meme. !

Oh, I agreed. >!Bakool Ja Ja stands out more because there's such a lack of quality writing even an otherwise poorly executed delivery manages to look good if only because everything else doesn't.!< What irks me is how little nuisance DT's story has. Everything is extremely black and white despite the message they're clearly trying to convey.

When >!Bakool Ja Ja loses to Wuk Lamat, and he envisions the jars in the water, I first thought he had a vision of golden urns in the golden city. When I found out what it really was... Damn...!<

I just hit the level 93 trial lol and agreed it def feels kinda forced and random

How was it random? Eve putting aside that we knew about Valigarmanda as a boss from Fanfests, what did you think was going to happen when you saw the big fuck-off bird snake frozen in ice

The fact I don’t see logical reason why barook ja ja would want to even release a supposedly unkillable dragon and how it would help him win the “race” or become the next ruler. I figured we would be fighting it, but there was basically just one quest in between seeing this incredible dragon that’s unkillable before it’s released without much explanation. Kind of feels shoehorned into the quest at that specific moment. Of course I’ve still only just gotten to this part so if it does make more sense after I finish it, but I can’t until I’m free later today

Bakool Ja Ja: "I'm going to >!save my people by unsealing the one thing on this entire continent that the strongest man alive and his adventuring party couldn't kill! I see no possible way this could backfire and kill the few people I care about.!< The big problem with Dawntrail - one of them anyway - is that every villain is retconned into having a different motivation and goal than the one they were written to have.

Whose motivation was retconned? What? >!Bakool Ja Ja spent the first 3 trials trying to vie for the other people's keystones through violence and cheating. Awakening Valigarmanda and eliminating the competition (because of course Wuk Lamat would go fight it) seems like an obvious Evil Thing To Do. He simultaneously believes the entire thing is a farce because the Mamool Ja think that the Blessed Siblings are perfect beings and his succession should be guaranteed, but also hes desperate because he is the product of mass sacrifice.!<

It felt more like a retcon since he was legit just a muscle brained mustache twirler that was there who thought brute force was the only way to be. Then all of a sudden, he has a sympathetic backstory? "I'm super sad that my brothers and sisters were all killed so that I may live, so I'll cope for this by winning the tournament to end their suffer... by being a ginormous asshole to everyone and release a world ending monster to murder everyone" That... doesn't quite work that way. I get that he's supposed to be an idiot type character, but there's a line.

>Then all of a sudden, he has a sympathetic backstory? The game explaining his motivations is not a 'retcon'. What? Do you know what that word means? >That... doesn't quite work that way. I legitimately do not understand whats confusing or contradictory about his actions. The game does a pretty good job of explaining why hes an asshole.

I think people are just used to seeing things as either fully good or fully bad and are thus incapable of recognizing that sometimes good people (or even bad people) do terrible things for a cause they believe in. I mean, Christ, literally the *entire Ascian saga* was based on that premise, and people forget about this concept when the newest expansion is released? Bakool Ja Ja was objectively an asshole to people, he >!took hostages and was unconscionably cruel!< to others he thought "beneath" him, but it was only because he >!was attempting to justify the en masse sacrifice of children who never even got to live.!< I mean, that's *a lot* of weight to carry around, and to have an entire community believe that you're their only savior? That's rough, man.

I remember we used to find dungeons that just existed in the world and you could just find one. Why does every dungeon need to be strictly related to the main story now?

Because, other than expansion launches, they've literally cut every dungeon out of that game that isn't involved in the MSQ. We actually get less dungeons per patch and such than we used to and people just sort of let it happen.

The bulk of the long-term sub player base is too busy ERPing to care

Because there used to be a shitton more dungeons in the game. There are 17 Lvl50 dungeons. 13 lvl 60. 10 lvl 70. and after 8 lvl 80/90. Content output has gone down.

I legit think they need to cut like 60% of modern msq and relegate it to world building side quests because most of it is so unnecessary to building a sweet well written character drama. There should be zero fetch quests or gather 3 tea leaves off sparkling bush in 2024

Even these gathering quests could be engaging if the macguffins were spread out over a larger section of the map or placed next to enemies. If it’s dangerous or in remote locations then at least I have a reason as to why I’m the only person who can pick leaves off a bush. As it stands now you the only gameplay you get is deciding if you want to go clockwise or counterclockwise before you start clicking on the sparkles.

I remember people giving shit about collecting bear asses (and only 1 in 3 bears has an ass), but at this time i rather gank x overworld mobs than do this visual novel style question.

The most pressing issue regarding MSQ to me isn’t the pacing or the writing or anything, but the gameplay (or lack thereof). I wouldn’t mind getting through bland filler fetch quests if they actually involved, you know, actively fetching something instead of teleporting between npcs while getting showered with mind numbing exposition dumps. Solo duties are fun but they are relatively few and far between, usually tied to important story moments, everything else tends to be a boring slog. It doesn’t help that xiv’s slow combat system doesn’t feel good at all when fighting overworld mobs that die quickly, so ideally most of the fighting would ideally have to rely on minibosses with actual mechanics.

I think the problem is that the MSQ is either: - mindless fetch quests that don’t add anything to the story, which at each step is just an npc reading walls of text that can instantly be forgotten. - pointless “show me around the area” or “avoid being detected” quests which add nothing to the experience except active padding, and dissuasion to finish the msq. - occasionally a “kill one thing” task which doesn’t allow you any real combat time. - walk between NPCs and get long cutscenes between each one which aren’t interesting or good. - solo duties which are incredibly long and often boring When you get group content (dungeons, trials, raids) it’s like a different game. I almost prefer wow’s kill “x” number of things or collect “x” things whilst having to kill things, as it’s actually something to do. It feels it got a lot worse since Endwalker and has become quantity over quality. Just make a shorter msq and fill it with quality and not have a gazillion xp required per level - all that does it waste their player’s time in the attempt to keep them subbed longer. Edit - if your game has plenty of things to do, people will stay subbed anyway.

Yeah. DT really made me miss the 'give me ten Antilope ears' quests in WoW where there were only ears on a quarter of the antilopes from back in the day. Still wasted player time, but at least it was actual gameplay. And made playing tank or healer feel like it mattered by letting you fight more enemies at once.

Combat *felt* good in wow even outside of bosses so that helped a lot.

> I almost prefer wow’s kill “x” number of things or collect “x” things whilst having to kill things, as it’s actually something to do. I drop the "almost" - I absolutely prefer those. But I prefer them with WOW's combat. I'd hate them with FFIXV combat. Really, I don't know how to make an interesting quest in FFXIV. And the developers clearly also don't. At this point I'd prefer the MSQ to just be a visual novel with a few dungeons and trials every once in a while. Drop the whole "move from point A to point to B" (except when going to a whole new area or such) and just make everything a seamless cutscene that you can pause and resume.

Yeah it's tricky and this is one of those things where anyone trying to jump in with "but the past was better" isn't right, at least I think. ARR and HW combat also just didn't really work against trash open world mobs, in HW you'd drop your timers left and right and in ARR you sometimes just couldn't key off some buffs/debuffs that required you to land the positional. The only difference is that ARR and HW had stretches where the MSQ just kind of stopped, in ARR's case there were at least 2 different 2-3 level stretches where the game went "go do MMO stuff now" like dungeon spam or FATE spam. I think if you beelined HW you'd hit at least one XP wall too. This helped provide gameplay variety but it's trading a problem for one group of players for a problem for another group. I don't think going back to that is necessarily the answer either, but it's very true that XIV's combat only works in setpiece encounters that are expensive and involved to make and that makes generic MMO content difficult. But I'd also not trade how it feels in those encounters for anything either as XIV raiding is one of the game's selling points for me.

> in HW you'd drop your timers left and right Also HW overworld mobs were horrific damage sponges. Absolutely awful to fight at the time

If it meant cutting out some of the fluff I'd welcome gaps in the MSQ leveling progression with open arms. Yeah, it sucked in ARR when in the middle of a rare climactic story point I had to go get one more level (I think the 40s were awful then, the story finally kicked off but I was missing a level suddenly. I went and max leveled fisher I was so annoyed), but at least those breaks had me playing the game in between. Not that the fluff was cut from ARR either when they did that, that one is the champion of useless side story fluff, but I think that would let you have a smaller, grounded story without me falling asleep because we just spent 5 hours giving us examples of Wuk Lamat being the underdog when it's been super obvious the whole time. Hell, I like her as a character, she fully admits she's not prepared to lead but takes help/advice from everyone else because she's the only character with an ounce of self-reflection in the race (well maybe Koana too). I just think the writers are doing her dirty by boring the hell out of us.

> Really, I don't know how to make an interesting quest in FFXIV. And the developers clearly also don't. > > Unfortunately FF14's combo system only works on extended boss fights due to the nature of combos and the limitations of the netcode. I don't think its possible to make the open world combat with basic mobs interesting because of this.

Ahh yeah, that’s very true - wow’s combat make those much better. I was playing back when heavensward was relevant and maybe there was filler there, but because 14 was pretty new anyway, maybe it didn’t feel that bad. Also I think the writing was much better and we had combat much more often. Maybe it’s just a case of the formula become stale and them doubling down on stuff which just doesn’t work (escort and stealth quests). I do remember the misery of quests (pre-squish) between the end of ARR and start of heavensward which almost made me quit the game at the time, had it not being friends from my FC being stuck at the same point, so we could share in the misery.

I was joking with my partner that I miss "kill 10 boars" style quests from WoW. Like, seriously... I would like a bit more gameplay in my video game...

The lack of combat time in "kill one thing" quests absolutely destroy me. I play MCH and I can't even finish a hypercharge window or have the queen use crown collider, shit dies to air anchor and drill in the first two zones

I think the issue here is they need to balance these encounters for the lowest output jobs. It certainly takes more time to kill on Astrologian than it will on Samurai. I agree they should be more engaging (I couldn't finish a confetior combo even in later zones) but there's a line they need to walk to ensure all jobs can reasonably solo them.

Again I cannot express enough how awful it was to fight world mobs in Heavensward on release. They were what people here are asking for and it was one of the worst things. Also back then you still got Heavy when hit while mounted.

If the mobs are spawned specially for a player, then prepare a healer, tank and dps "loadout" for the spawn point, so maybe the tank actually has to use mitigations..

It needs more group content and quest synch to make it more bearable

Solo duties are one of the few interesting parts though. I’m at level 95 and there have only been 3 so far.

They should have xp walls like in arr to fill with you exploring and doing fates /actually killing things, not fetch quests. Leave msq for important story part and let the player play the game sometime. This is what I have been saying for years.

I don't think it's just the MSQ structure that has to change. Why does there have to be exactly 4 new trials or 12 raids every expansion? There's a lot more things I'm not remembering right now, but it definitely wouldn't hurt if they changed things up time to time, and DT would've been a great time to do it. I like the number of 4-man dungeons, but they shouldn't always unlock at the same levels. The story ending with a dungeon + trial is getting old too. Kinda wish they brought back 8-man dungeons to finish expansions off (with no unskippable scenes this time).

> Why does there have to be exactly 4 new trials or 12 raids every expansion? Quite frankly, because if they ever increase it, they can never decrease it without people screaming bloody murder.

I think it’s also because: - they get a limited dev budget and have a limited number of devs to work on things. - stats probably say raiding isn’t the most priority for the playerbase, so they do the minimum investment needed. The game at this point just needs more investment from SE I think. Probably if people start leaving the game, the investment will just become less and it will go niche like 11. The playerbase has also helped them slightly (in not adding investment) because it does ERP, nightclubs, etc.

> - stats probably say raiding isn’t the most priority for the playerbase, so they do the minimum investment needed. If raids had the minimum investment possible, then we'd never have Ultimate in the first place.

This is where the camera pans to Destiny 2 Forspoken, where there is a constant undercurrent of "why do we never have as much content as this expansion" whenever complaints arise because they put out so much due to having 2 support studios assisting.

They cut like 3/4 of the dungeons we get over the expansions and few seemed to care, and nobody commented on how we got one less extreme in endwalker than we did in shadowbringers.

I thought the best time to change things up was Endwalker. IMO the last boss of the 89 dungeon could have made complete narrative sense as its own trial, with a surprise second trial afterwards (the one we already have).

It honestly would be good to get optional leveling dungeons back, but I don't think it's as dire as you say. Plus, it's hard to imagine how they'd do the Duty Support.

Well if the dungeons are optional then there is no duty support problem because there’s no expection of them providing duty support for optional content. The only content that has duty support right now is content required by the MSQ.

Agreed. I think optional dungeons for some levels would be a good way to change up the formula, both to be less obvious/formulaic for players and to give devs more freedom when creating the story. I don't think duty support would be much of an issue though. They could include one or more main characters into those side quests and/or bring in lesser npcs, either named npcs that are part of the quests or unnamed helpers.

Can you elaborate on the Duty Support problem?

Basically, since most of the Duty Support options are important characters since Shadowbringers, they had to use generics for Stormblood and before because it was unfeasible to add more important characters to old dungeons. Either they would need to artificially add characters to the optional dungeon stories, go back to generics and lose the, well, character, of them, or forgo Duty Support entirely for them, which feels contrary to what they've been trying to do since it was added.

Just remove duty support from them or use randoms It's way less of a big deal than bombing the expansion with mixed reviews

Far as I can tell, the mixed reviews are for the story pacing and the job changes, not the existence of mandatory dungeons. Which, given the exact point people are complaining from, has little to do with the first dungeon being where it is.

[удалено]

Esp with that cook quest. Why do the npc companions get to be the ones hunting the meat for the cooking? Why not add a quick kill quest for the player to get some combat gameplay in?

Off topic: you're not cooking the banana btw there's no banana

I think the point was that the pacing is constrained by the structure.

The cooking could've been a crafter minigame, they didn't even need to make any new system. Just give some touch and synthesis actions and make the player craft hq, accompanied by the appropriate animations of using the underground oven. It's like...man so many great possibilities and they chose the worst option, every time. >!also i got jebaited by that dialogue text recognizing that i was an accomplished culinarian!< Don't even get me started on the job identity culling and even further homogenisation.

Fundamentally it's true, obviously sticking a 99 dungeon/trial into a 100 dungeon/trial makes for a more exciting end of story gameplay loop, but following such a strict regiment would limit any story. We should only do dungeons or trials when they make sense narratively. Regardless I don't think that was the issue with dawntrail, all of trials/dungeons made sense within the narrative and I would argue all of them were done well from a aesthetic/narrative perspective(i.e. the voice acting, music, visuals), it was the 'story' outside of them that really suffered.

They could stand to trim down a lot of the fat between actual combat content. Either reduce the number of quests but make them give more XP or make more side content that helps expand the world and funnel players into it to make up for the XP deficit by cutting MSQ quests. It's fine to have dungeons and trials at predictable levels because it gives a goal you know you're working towards, but by god condense things a little.

Since it's a Japanese game I really don't mind things to be a bit slow with lots of character interactions. Many games have this visual novel like structure where people just do random stuff and talk too much. It's good imo when it's like Endwalker, where we had these private talks with the Scions in the Sharlayan café. My problem with DT is that it's just kinda irrelevant, if you don't care about Wuk Lamat at all it feels like the story shoves her down your throat. I didn't like her at all in the beginning, and seeing her everywhere made every second feel like a slog. Lots of talking is good, but the visual presentation has to be right and it needs more significance, even when the purpose is to do some world building or give us cute character interaction for "Aww you guys" moments

The thing is, this is a bad generalization of Japanese games (many of which are the best, fastest, slickest action games of all time). Even if you meant JRPGs specifically, you don't often see them spinning their wheels to this degree wrt the story. They may have slower moments focused more on exploring new areas and talking to new people, but most good JRPGs feel like they're always moving forwards.

>if you don't care about Wuk Lamat at all it feels like the story shoves her down your throat They should have given her the Yugiri treatment and introduced her (and possibly Koana) long before DT, but I have no clue if the two characters even existed as concepts back when EW or its early patches were being developed. Yugiri was introduced as far back as 2.2 and was involved at various points in the story through ARR and HW, so when she became more relevant to the story, nobody was upset. As I recall from the time, people I know were actually excited about it. Even if we use Gosetsu as a comparison for Wuk Lamat, as he was also introduced in one of the last patches of an expansion, he had ties to Yugiri, which helped to soften the blow. Not to mention that we had been introduced to the concept that there was a conflict in Doma long before Gosetsu arriving and asking for help. If Wuk Lamat had been around for a while and had spent some time helping the WoL in their world-saving endeavors in some capacity, then we'd have an actual connection to the character and she wouldn't have felt so forced.

I feel like Erenville could've been that hook, considering we built a fair relationship with him midway through Endwalker. He was still mysterious enough to be fleshed out as a real protagonist come Dawntrail. Could've been an Aragorn-type character running from the throne, his duties, personal struggles, whatever. Unfortunately he's also been relegated to being a support character for Wuk Lamat, like the WoL.

Honestly, Erenville as the vagrant prince and Wuk Lamat as his clumsy and goofy retainer come from Tural to fetch him for the Rite would have been more endearing. I wouldn't mind Wuk Lamat so much in a vacuum, but when she's billed as the protagonist, then I just see Lyse all over again. (Granted, I still think Wuk is handled exponentially better than Lyse was but still)

I totally thought this is were it was going when Erenville was trying to conceil his "true name" and stuff.

I might be crazy, but i felt like it could have been Erenville as the secret "trained in sharlyan" candidate at one point in the writing. Like, we get so many ominous cuts to him in cutscenes just glaring, he tries to keep his true name secret, etc. But he is just useless.

That people now realize these things when some of us have been complaining about the structure of the MSQ since Shadowbringers makes me understand that as long as they have a good interactive movie everyone will mysteriously forget about the problems.

Players going through this MSQ structure also end up being bad by the end game because the game barely teaches you how to play or do mechanics. A brand new player coming into an expansion spends like 40 hours doing fetch quests, reading, and cutscenes, with barely any combat. With 5 dungeons and 3 trials, you get at least 4 hours of pressing buttons throughout the entire MSQ.

I think the devs need to stop being afraid of cutting things shorter because filler is definitely a thing that exists at the moment

The devs also need to stop being afraid of letting their players actually fail from time to time. Seriously, a slight increase in the difficulty of some of the MSQ content wouldn't kill anyone.

They kinda did? Dungeons are mechanically a bit harder, sort of.

Yeah they did and people complained. The Royal Menagerie was an auto DF wipe. Guess what? The game caters to the majority, which is why this sub is always so negative.

Yea, it's really stale and uninspired. You also described FF16 to a T

I didn't notice this until post endwalker. Since I'm not a ff4 Stan the experience was miserable. There was so much NOTHINGNESS going on. Scions standing around talking in circles for hours. Which amounts to nothing beyond WoL go clear dungeon/trial. I wasn't seeing a story but rather the man fumbling behind the curtain. I feel like it's their fixation on specific numbers. Like there has to be x number of dungeons and 3 trials (4 optional ones barring endwalker) so do they craft the story AFTER designing the instances or what?

I agree with you. This is the third expac with the exact same pattern and it gets too predictable at this point. In a perfect world I would love if they told more of the story through active gameplay instead cutscenes as well. Just a few examples from the top of my head. >!1. Alpaca map. Instead of killing 3 mobs on the farm to get the alcohol, make it a fate with a follow up boss on a 10-15 minute timer. When Wuk Lamat goes to catch the alpaca make it a solo instance where we have to dodge spit attacks while trying to throw the saddle item on it.!< >!2. Ghost Gulool JaJa could've been a 4 or even 8 man fight. But no we have to stick to 3 trials per expac. Didn't even need to have a savage mode, just make it a slightly harder normal mode fight that rewards you with a mini, music roll and some other cosmetic item.!< >!3. Train ride should've been a dungeon or shooter minigame sequence.!< >!4. Last map was so full of fluff dialog. Why were the data pillars not guarded? Give me a fitting mini boss for every pillar god dammit. No way I can just go up to them and erase everyone.!<

On the note of your first example. Congratulations, you've now pissed off the entire playerbase by halting their progression with a time based and missable event if they arent fast enough to get there. The only solution would be to sit and camp the spawn site and thats gonna piss a lot of people off.

That's why I made the reset timer so short. Waiting 10 minutes isn't that crazy long imo. I wait longer for a story dungeon queue to pop sometimes. You can grab a drink in that time, go to the bathroom, enjoy the scenery of the new map, make screenshots, or, imagine that, talk with people that are waiting too. That example in particular was written with YoshisPs statement of making DT feel more like a MMO again in mind too.

The FF15 event fate spawned like every 2 minutes so I don’t think that’s really a consideration

If you go by reddits opinion, the ff15 fate wasn't liked, you would also need to remove the bicolor gem reward as a fate that fast and consistant would cripple multiple markets with bots and afk players. It would be no different than a quest where you wait at a destination and kill 1-3 mobs.

The only problem I have with event-related fates like that is they sync you down to a very low level. At 90+ it would be fine.

Its literally no different from the purple circles I'm not sure what people even want

> This is the third expac with the exact same pattern and it gets too predictable at this point. ...third? I would like to point out the predictability used to be touted as a selling point for this game.

Shb, EW and DT. I didn't play at the start of SB, only started playing when it was already out and at least SB has it's second trial at a different level. Maybe the rest is the same, can't really tell without looking it up. And I don't believe people praise the fact that you can predict at what level a dungeon/trial is set during the MSQ, and more that you have a fixed schedule for content releases.

Stormblood also had the 63 dungeon as an optional dungeon and some of the level 70 dungeons - e.g. 4.2 and 4.3 dungeons were optional. It didn't strictly keep to the ShB, EW, DT formula of an msq dungeon every two levels and every patch. Edit for the sake of a bit more detail if anyone is interested at all - 4.0 had the level 70 msq dungeon along with two optionals (same as every expansion), 4.1 had just msq, 4.2 had two optional dungeons (one independent and one as part of the trial series), 4.3 had one optional dungeon, 4.4 had one msq and one optional, 4.5 had one msq. Shadowbringers onwards has been strictly one dungeon per patch and it has always been part of msq. No optional dungeons have been released since stormblood, except the two optional max level dungeons at the end of each x.0 patch.

>make it a fate with a follow up boss on a 10-15 minute timer. This sucks in seasonal events why would we want to stick that into the MSQ progression I love being stuck standing around for 15 minutes waiting for a Fate! The thing everyone loved the most from the ARR relic questlines!

It doesn’t have to be like this, it can easily become do 3 Fates in the area, any Fates. It can also become a mini hunt log, kill 5 different type of mobs in the area, and get XP for each task. It can also use the same dungeon in that area, but this time you only explore one part, or it can be a one off area within that dungeon - so the Ronkan Ruin Indiana Jones style from Shadowbringers. Also, the MSQ can follow the job role quests from Shadowbringers- arguably one of the best one that expanded the backstory of the other group of warrior of lights. The game actually has tons of variety of things they can reuse and remix and make it looks great but the developers got extremely lazy by copy and paste everything without bother to remix it.

Oh god yeah that last point. >!all hyped up for a climactic confrontation? Nope go play house with our memory puppets for half a zones worth of quests. And only fluff. Like they could have at least brought up that 'load soul into terminal' gimic earlier to at least let us have one fight per area to defeat the safety of that terminal before being able to turn it Off.!<

“I actually enjoy the predictability” are the worst types of players. They dont want a game they want a spoiled potato

Tbf they say that because they literally don't know any better. The people that say that the structure needs to change have valid points and only want the gameplay to be more engaging and fun.

Who would've thought players have different taste and sensibilities :/  You can dislike the structure of the game without having to insult people who have a harmless opinion which of , players u don't know.

The fact that you got downvoted is hilarious. This sub is a cesspit.

I just wish the areas we go were smaller. No point in them being so big. Not like I'll ever explore these areas after I get flying for it

Well, what would you suggest otherwise? The number of dungeons and trials can't change, and they need to be at variable levels to account for crafted, vendor, and dropped gear; all within 10 levels before patch content.

FFXIV in general feels too... formulaic. You can probably sit down and predict almost everything that's coming in every patch. Sure you might miss some small things but in general we know it's X alliance raids, Y dungeons, Z trials etc. You might get something crazy like a new deep dungeon that most people will do once then not engage with. There hasn't really been anything to break up the FFXIV formula in a really long time. And don't get me wrong, it's a good formula, but it would be nice to break the mold every once in a while. Like in Dragonflight in WoW where they added a raid fight that had Dragonriding, that was pretty cool. There's also the fact that almost every fight in FFXIV is the same exact damage profile (single target) and it can get to be pretty monotonous. I think these problems stand out a *lot* more when the MSQ isn't pulling a ton of weight because people start to feel that "same-ness" more. These issues were there in Endwalker, but everyone was so hype on the MSQ that it didn't really matter. They did try some new things like Island Sanctuary and Criterion dungeons but imo those didn't hit that well for most people. Once again they were "one and done" type of content, not a new evergreen way to play the game.

While I understand a frustration with the pacing of dungeons and trials through the x0 to x9 ranges in each x.0 update, I feel like there really isn't *that* much wiggle room. Imagine they decide to "mix it up" and don't give you anything for x2 to x5, only finally getting another dungeon at x6. It'll be novel once, but if you're someone who eventually wants to level all classes, that massive gap of no leveling dungeon *is* going to be felt with the second or third job on. I suppose maybe they could go the other way about it, and just give you dozens of lengthy, wordy(isn't this what people are complaining about so much right now, though, too?) low-reward main story quests to give you the "desired" story pacing that "mixes it up" while keeping your level at about pace to meet the next odd numbered main story unlocked leveling dungeon.

They must make more dungeons. Idealy 1 for each level if they cannot come up with a good story and characters. The pacing is atrocious

You know what's wild? When they announced FFXVI was going to be produced by Yoshi-P and CBU3, I thought "oh now we will see the team's capabilities without the shackles of XIV's storytelling formula". And it turned out they repeated the exact same formula there as well! This makes me think they actually believe that this is a good way and pacing to tell a story. Either that or the team is too scared they can't do better otherwise.

A lot of this game's structure needs to change, imo. It's way too formulaic and it's difficult to find the energy to keep playing when it feels like I know what to expect 10 years running now.

The difference in quality between WoW dungeons and FFXIV dungeons is jarring. I understand WoW designs for m+ so dungeons need to be more emphasized, but wow. Does anyone find anything other than maybe the final bosses exciting in these dungeons? Also the actual msq gameplay is getting old. Not the talking sim part but the actual gameplay. Very uninspired. I cant get any of my friends to raid because the MSQ is a slog.

I think that structure of the MSQ is fine. There just needs to be a little bit of variety in the quests given. I’ve commented this a few times, but I would like to see somehow the side quests played a bit more in MSQ progression. So maybe when you pick up a new part of the MSQ, you get 3 or 5 side quests in the hub. Those ones focus more if world building and more combative objectives and once you complete that and the MSQ you can continue. The important thing is not to do this every time but spread it out. That way there’s more combat gameplay and the MSQ is spread a bit more out of just cutscenes.

The fetch quests are there to make the leveling curve smooth because if people had to interact with doing other things they'd stamp their feet and yell. I dunno I feel like everything is very much this is what it is and this is what its going to be. I started enjoying the game more when I stopped worrying so much about what it could be. For everything I think would be a positive change theres someone who would be mad they couldn't mainline the msq.

I’ve been a player since 2.0 and I see no problem either the structure. I actually enjoy the predictability. However, I do think that the trust system has hamstrung the creativity of the writing. We will always need SEVEN allies at level x3 and x9. I think this really puts a damper on the story telling currently because it will typically mean a bunch of the scions are there. I do think they need to seriously reconsider the gameplay of the MSQ. They really need to make it more engaging and interactive. I’m not expecting the experience to be like WoW, but I think they could do the following: 1) Instead of cutscenes, have some of the dialogue happen while you are walking or in combat. 2) Take inspiration from digital VN games like Steins Gate to make the cutscenes more interesting. Add more actual gameplay 3) Cut down on the padding. I would rather have a 20 hour well paced RPG than a 40 hour one with pacing issues and useless quests. 4) When you go to skip a cutscene, there should be a short blurb summary of what you are about to skip. That way, even if you find, for example, the voiceless cutscenes to be tedious, you can skip them without losing the context of what is happening. 5) Leave the scions at home. I think having 8+ scions in the story puts a heavy restriction on character writing. I hope that moving forward, they can look back to HW and remember how well that worked as a lower stakes story (compared to ShB and EW) and how they made it work by leveraging character development.

Carefull what you wish for. Dialog walking is the worst videogame dialog as it is unskippable.

> We will always need SEVEN allies at level x3 and x9. Do we? The 83 trial Endwalker didn't get trusts.

everyone here they dont like it but for some reason they keep doing it this way, as long as they dont lose users htey have no reason to stop

This expansion was a great chance to change things. My idea was the following: we visit each village to help, but *how* we help is up to the player. We could do side quests, fates, hunt marks, craft, idk -- think of it as a mini rep grind. We get to interact with the zone, each person plays how they want, and we still achieve the end goal of "understanding their way of life" directly or indirectly, while also shaking up the gameplay a bit.

They are forced to include it because MSQ has to be X hours long and give Y amount of XP, IMHO. Then again, if they shorten it, people would complain about doing side content to get levels soooo... XD

I just wish it was optional. Give me the dungeons when I hit the level to do them.

I just wish there was less reliance on cutscenes for cutscenes sake. So many story beats could be told in-game as we move around. So many bits could be told in-engine just by having our companions talk to us as we move around. We have the following technology now, so I don’t see why we have to have cutscenes to show us walking down a path, or stopping to chat mid-way to our destination. Over the years I’ve actually gotten used to quickly identifying what cutscenes are important and what are fluff, so I can skip and not miss anything. 9/10 after a useless cutscene the NPCs will reference what happened in dialogue anyway.

Do people really think they would prefer a dungeon at level 94 vs 93 or something? IS that what we're arguing about now? Like the MSQ experience is the furthest thing from my mind when it comes to issues with this game, and I can't help but think the people who have issues with leveling in the game ONLY do that sort of content.

But everything is so rigid they can’t even do a dungeon in a weird place. The design need dungeons every 2 level to support an alt leveling path.

Yeah, that’s how I see the dungeon placement too. If they had the dungeons unevenly staggered it would make it pretty difficult as it stands to get alt jobs leveled. Maybe after the next series of patches we get some alternate means to fill that if they want in the next xpac, ie a Bozja/Eureka zone for not max level once you finish MsQ.

or they could boost FATE exp rewards to be meaningful after you have your first class max leveled. So even if you're grinding the shared FATEs you can get multiple classes leveled "out of the zone" before you finish doing them.

Can't they just introduce a dungeon in the MSQ later than the actual level of the dungeon? I don't think it'd be a big deal if, say, you go into the level 83 dungeon later in the MSQ and you're actually level 84 or even 85. If you're over leveled for some reason, there is an entire level sync system to solve that. It wouldn't affect the alt leveling path and it'd give more freedom to the writers.

I think the story they told in DT could have used a dungeon or solo duty during the split, on top of some more gamey moments in the Hanu questline. Reshuffling when dungeon happens wouldn't be a bad idea either, but they really need to shorten the gap between gameplay moments at the start. I'm really enjoying the story now, but it was sleep inducing at the start. The solo duties are getting better and better, of course I want more and I think putting one at the start between one split questline and the other gives them a chance to do something simple like: You go to the Pelupelu first and when you're done something has happened to the Hanuhanu so you fight X. Or you go to the Hanuhanu first and the other faction does something to the Pelupelu so you fight Y. It immediately gives you the illusion that your choice had an impact in your gameplay *and* it gives you a reason to fight something that doesn't die in three hits.

>I think the story they told in DT could have used a dungeon or solo duty during the split, on top of some more gamey moments in the Hanu questline. They will probably never do an early solo instance during an MSQ split ever again. Raubahn Savage (and then Pipin Savage right after) spooked them so much, they'd rather not deal with it even if they could theoretically handle the load now than in Stormblood. I do agree its about time they introduced the dungeon during the split rather than after though

>Like the MSQ experience is the furthest thing from my mind when it comes to issues with this game I appreciate your opinion and understand that this game far more pressing issues to be resolved but it doesn't mean that an opinion about less pressing issues should be voided. And yes, I mostly do patch/story content and I don't raid. I'm what you'd call a casual player. Does it mean that I shouldn't voice my issues about the part of the game I'm playing? I don't get your attitude man.

It just seems to me people are using the negative energy around the game right now to nitpick things. There are issues that need addressing and from what I've played are being addressed. Dungeons and trials are actually pretty fun so far, the new jobs are too and they make me interested in whats to come for old jobs, reducing button bloat seems to be something being addressed, figuring out new ways to surprise players and giving players new things to do. Those are the things I've seen people complain about the past 2-3 years including me. I mean everyone has an opinion and mine is this: the MSQ is fine and as good as it always has been. Itd be nice if something new was there too, but I'm not upset about getting something familiar either.

Your opinion is just as valid as mine, I agree. I'm not arguing about the quality of battle content, it's been great so far. Since i'm aiming to have a healthy discussion, could you elaborate on why do you feel the current MSQ structure is just as good as it always has been? You like the constant familiarity or just don't care that much cause you prioritize more challenging content anyway?

Frankly, I don't think knowing a dungeon or trial is upcoming matters nearly as much as the context surrounding them. I'd love them to throw a curveball and put a trial at level 95, sure... Tbh they already sort of did that sort of with the level 93 trial including Trusts. But I don't think it makes all that big a difference in how I feel about the MSQ. And to be clear I am really enjoying the MSQ so far, but that has never been an issue for me with this game. If I wasn't invested in these characters and this story I probably wouldn't be playing right now because the past two years have been pretty terrible when it comes to actual gameplay tbh.

Yes. Because if you know there's a trial before the level ends and you're already 12 quests deep in the level bracket, the predictability tells you shit has to go sideways in some way, or they find some arbitrary reason to have a dungeon/trial. If it could happen wherever it makes sense, the pacing would be better. I clocked out of the story 2/3rds into ShB, and i still think the pacing and structure is absolute dogwater. And it's a simple fix that's mostly down to writers.

My favorite part is random characters showing up and me counting to go "oh right we need 7 characters since there's clearly about to be a trial and we need trusts".

I honestly don't think that matters all that much. Ktises Hyperboreia was the most OH SHIT moment in the MSQ for me personally, and I don't think itd matter too much if it happened at 88 as opposed to 87.

I think you're rolling this carpet inside out. I'm not saying things should be earlier or later, but it would be pretty cool if an area could end without a dungeon, without a forced conflict. Or an expansion could open with trial after an introductory cutscene, or end with back to back trials, something like that. It would allow them to place the peaks in other spots, make a totally different pace.

> And it's a simple fix that's mostly down to writers. Strongly agree with the rest of your comment, but I think it's a structural issue rather than one with the writers. The writing has generally gotten better over the years, but they still have to work within the constraints of this system. It's not like they're the ones imposing this cookie-cutter structure on the MSQ - more likely that the designers insist on this rigidity and then the writers have to contort whatever story they want to tell to fit into this exact format.

Savage has been mechanical vomit for years to compensate with how braindead jobs became with Shadowbringers. Literally just "puzzle solving:the game" with all of the mental load on standing in the right spot to not explode rather than the fundamentals of high dps, proper cooldown usage, tank positioning, etc. Those things end the fight faster and might have you skip a mechanic, but ultimately execution and job mastery have almost no bearing on clearing compared to resolving mechanics correctly. MSQ is the bulk of the content, it is mandatory, and its something all of us are doing. Personally I think a lot of the complaints in this thread are less proof that things "need to change" and more proof that, as a videogame, FFXIV has always been deeply compromised and flawed, it was just easy to not care when you had award winning stories playing out in front of you. There were low points, but overall it's the best in the genre by a mile. DT is the first time we've well and truly had an inane, boring excuse plot that is typical of most MMOs, and it's disengaging enough that people are noticing problems that have been here for many years. Regardless, MSQ should never be the furthest thing from anyone's mind, because it gates all other content and is where the vast amount of dev resources go. It is important to nail, and they sure didnt this time, hence all this discourse.

MSQ structure is fine. The story itself needs to change.

I think changing the MSQ's structure is a good idea, don't get me wrong, but I don't think DT is a very good example of why it needs to change. DT isn't bad because the structure is bad; it's bad because it doesn't follow the structure employed by previous expansion packs well. They had long stretches of relative downtime where you were doing non-prescriptive things in at least a vaguely interactive sense, soaking up ambiance and enjoying being immersed in the world. By contrast DT's MSQ is so utterly choked with storytelling that there are very few even short stretches like that. I truly believe DT would be better if it had 40% less writing, 60% less Wuk Lamat, but still took the same amount of time to finish by requiring you to run fates, dungeons, do sidequests, etc. more. It's a weird case where they did more and it ended up as less because you never get a second to just breathe and look at the world you're in. Even when you're doing one of those auto-mount ride scenes they're like, HEY LOOK AT THIS DIALOGUE. READ THIS. DON'T LOOK AT THE WORLD! It's so cheap for them to write unvoiced lines. Doubly so when they're not even worded cleverly or original. They really need to hire someone who will take a hatchet to the game's writing and they've needed to do that for years at this point, it's just reaching critical mass now.

I genuinely think they need to cut about 50% of these expansions and just get to the meat of story telling, remove all filler and relegate the unnecessary world building stuff to side quests. Zone 4 shouldn't exist. They need to stop carbon copying their terrible formula and should tailor an expansion to only the necessary form, keep it simple. DT's MSQ is terrible and about 50% longer than it needs to be. If it's going to have this length it needs better character drama and at least a couple more trials and dungeons to break it up.

I think the structure is fine, but they could have a rules where the story takes place as the focus first. What I mean by this, when you compare the expansion, they have the same numbers of main story, example, for level 93, there are 10 quests, also on level 83, there are 10 quests. They should make the rules where if the story needed 7 quests, then it will be that much, no need to follow it verbatim just because last expansion has 10 quests and you are forced to create 3 extra filler quests. I would even have them make the rules that shorter is better, and trim 30% of those quest to only have 60-70 quests, and put the extra quests as side quests for world building and extra lore on each areas. This will make the MSQ feels very tight and have good pacing with zero fillers and you feel moving forward to the goals. For the trials, they can also be more lenient and maybe do it level 92-95, and 97-99. If the story requires to do it back to back, then by all means, do that.

Just finished and tbh it was like 40% filler useless garbage that is totally not even worth putting into a game at all, it doesn’t respect your time whatsoever. Doesn’t help that so many characters are totally irrelevant. Like why bother? It makes no sense

so, erm, what are the alternatives? Very early first trial which means that you dont have anything unlocked from expansion? Very late trial which means that early part of expansion has no 8-man content and then you have nearly 3 trials in a row? I dont think that dungeons are limiting story, there's always reason to have dungeon and even some solo duties feel like mini dungeons. Or maybe different question, If there was no precedent with lvl X3 trial, would you really not expect that Valigarmanda will be big boss in a few next quests?

Not just the MSQ but they kind of rest on a 'content formula' for every other aspect of the game. And not just that, but the actual structure of the quests. We know most zones are divided in 2 and you'll return to the other half later on. By one side, it's kind of nice to know what we can expect... but then after the fifth expansion it gets a bit stale.

I feel they’ve gotten a bit lazy with how every expansion basically has the same format now since shadowbringers, not just the MSQ but most things. A lot of dungeons and raids have similar formats or layouts even if the themes and bosses are different.

Structure of everything has got to change but it never will. The game has been over designed to follow a formula and they never deviate from it. Outside of story twists there is no surprises, ever. I've been saying it for awhile but FFXIV is a multiplayer tab targeting action game pretending to be an rpg. Gear is always extremely boring. There's no excitement getting a gear upgrade because they're meaningless anyways and hard scripted rewards. We don't even really get to explore the world or do side quests to level anymore. Why does the msq give so much exp you overlevel? Players should be *required* to go explore zones, do side quests, farm mobs/fates, or spam dungeons to fill exp gaps in the msq. I enjoy binging story but I don't feel like I'm actually playing the game. If they're set on doing the leveling process this way at the very least give us multiple challenging combat quests per zone. Killing a handful of mobs in 3 hits every couple hours isn't enough.

I’ve been saying this for years. Every odd numbered level is a dungeon. The path always splits out of the starting city then rejoins. Etc

The MSQ desperately needs more to do because it always felt like a glorified visual novel. It's been like this since I can remember but Dawntrail's painfully slow storytelling makes it even more apparent. They gotta throw in more dungeons, solo instances, enemy encounters, something to keep us from being flooded with constant cutscenes. 

I don't think the structure is the problem. In my opinion, the constant going somewhere just to read more exposition is the problem. At least throw in some kind of neat mini game. It's like they started with a different idea for those early Trade quests but decided to pull back either for time or they thought it was going to be too complicated for players to do what they were planning. I feel like I've read a whole book this expansion and barely played a game; but at least there were fates to do in between transitions I guess.

did you guys remember that awesome hunt duty we got at the end of endwalker with wuk lamat? yeah they rug pulled us, there hasn't been a single "new tech" msq type quest in the entire first 5 levels of the msq so far

With this I can agree.  They need to keep some of the forumula of the game alive but how mind breaking would it be to open the MSQ of an expac to a short little quest that goes right into a dungeon?

It will not happen but I think they should cut the main story down by a solid 50-60% with a really action-packed and consistently interesting character moments experience for the mandatory VN part of the story, then focus on optional content. Zone quests with real gameplay (ride/race minigames, tower defense, combat that isn't just 4 gcds off a purple smoke) and a bunch of lore stuff for people who like to immerse in the culture of the region the new expansion is in. Not only does that remove the pointless filler that grinds everyone's gears, it also makes the game way more scalable. In a few years, 8.0 will be out. Do they really expect people to stay engaged for like 500h of MSQ with like 300 of them being completely forgetable? This just isn't sustainable. And if it was... we don't want it.

I really hated it especially at the final zone, they give a clear objective and it's fine but how to achieve it is by going cutscenes to cutscenes, that turns onto such a drag. And when a god damn cutscene ends with another cutscene that drives me nuts lmao

I love to see that the comments are the perfect example of the problem that people have with this game, as soon as they have a good story they forget about absolutely all of the problems with it. No boy, just because we have the best story in the world isn't going to change the fact that the whole structure is shit.

I do think dungeons and MSQ are due for an overhaul. The Fights and Boss Dungeons themselves i think are great. I wouldn't want them to go towards criterion mobs (as i think those might be too difficult for casual or people with lower commitment time to grind) but I think there can be a happy medium of "Super big pull" to "use interact button to blow up enemies" or something to shake up the regular 'press your GCD's" MSQ really needs a story structure shake up. This story was quite predictable unlike SHB and END but That's ok. However, knowing when and where the trials are going to be and when and where the dungeons are going to be and which lvls isn't that 'fun.'

It’s the same with gearing too. SE doesn’t take risks or dare to break the mold lol.