I FINALLY did it

[Katchii]

Why? Like I said, MSQ =/ story
Example: the trial by combat in Heavensward. When I first experienced it I thought it was epic, one of the best cutscenes and scenarios they'd released. I wanted to know what happened next and I was pumped. ...Until it ended and I realized it was back to the typical MMO fetch and kill quests. You see, not every single MSQ is tied to the overarching plot or is absolutely necessary to tell the story. There is a ton of filler, and I personally found that filler to be too much. That's it, it isn't any more complicated than that.

I mean, ffs another poster mentioned a few pages ago having another 250 quests to go. That is ridiculous.

Thanks for bearing with me. I do empathize with this sentiment. For me the story is good enough that I'll endure the MSQ in order to experience it, and the game means enough to me that if I REALLY don't want to do the MSQ, I'll drop some cash to get the story skip potion. I have no problem supporting SE in that way.

I do think that they should put in some kind of abridged story version for previous expansions and returning players though. As I think you said before, that could cause problems with the pacing of character leveling because as much as I support an abridged story vehicle, I would not support that version allowing characters to level up at that same abridged pace.

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It does say on the screenshot the $25 option completes both ARR and Heavensward.

It will be curious to see what the next potion is. Will they make it $18 for ARR + HW and $25 for ARR + HW + SB or will there be a third tier?

I think they want to keep them separate so players can choose since some may want to skip ARR but play HW story and then play or skip SB. Hard to say the best route in that regard.

Question for any who know - if you use a story skip potion, the MSQ is flagged as completed so the quests don't show up anymore, right?

That might be a solution Square could explore. Find a way to let players buy an MSQ skip potion, a level boost potion, but keep MSQ quest chain open for play. That way players could be at current content and able to play with friends for endgame type stuff while going back and playing through the story at their leisure. Maybe that's the purpose of the MSQ "New Game+" they're talking about?

From my understanding, when you use the MSQ skip potion it flags the MSQ quests as completed, so you can't go back and experience them, the same way that the level boost potion flags all job quests from 1-60 as completed so you can't go back and experience the class story.

With the introduction of the New Game+ type feature where it will allow people to back an re-experience MSQ content this would be somewhat alleviated, but I'm not sure how that would roll out, will it just be battle content or everything, including the boring fetch quests?

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Although the Unskippable cutscenes bit makes people grumble a bit. Plenty of time to make a snack or visit the bathroom though.

While true, if you're leveling, the reward is absolutely worth it. It's worth 40-60% of an xp bar (at least, I haven't calculated exactly, but it's a HUGE chunk) from the xp bonus alone, not to mention the xp from all of the mobs inside the instance.

I usually watch youtube or anime while doing them, but there is technically a way to skip the cut scenes, it's just a pain. Manually close the application and sign back in and you'll have "skipped" the cut scene.

[Projectmars]

While true, if you're leveling, the reward is absolutely worth it. It's worth 40-60% of an xp bar (at least, I haven't calculated exactly, but it's a HUGE chunk) from the xp bonus alone, not to mention the xp from all of the mobs inside the instance.

I usually watch youtube or anime while doing them, but there is technically a way to skip the cut scenes, it's just a pain. Manually close the application and sign back in and you'll have "skipped" the cut scene.

Yeah, I kinda underestimated how much EXP you get from the MSQ roulette until I did one to try to get to level 70... got 4 million exp from one run.

EDIT: Someone in that run also said switching language to Japanese get it to go faster... but on the other hand you would probably still want to wait for everyone else anyways.

[-aiko-]

It does say on the screenshot the $25 option completes both ARR and Heavensward.

Ha you're right. I didn't notice it. I guess it makes sense to offer separate purchases if you only want to skip certain quests but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the ARR only skip is very rarely purchased.

[Veluren]

Ha you're right. I didn't notice it. I guess it makes sense to offer separate purchases if you only want to skip certain quests but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the ARR only skip is very rarely purchased.

It depends, common word in the community is that HW has much better narrative, voice acting, and quest flow than ARR, so with that ingrained in a new player's mind, they may enjoy the lore but not how the story is told, and want to get to the "good parts"

[Donald Hellscream]

Since I got the starter edition for "free" through twitch prime I've decided to give the game a shot. I find the game reasonably enjoyable in terms of gameplay but I feel that I am somewhat at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the story as I didn't really play any Final Fantasy games growing up and thus know very little about the universe as a whole. Is the story in any way connected to previous installments of the franchise or is it a standalone story with no ties to the Final Fantasy games preceding it?

[Super Kami Dende]

Since I got the starter edition for "free" through twitch prime I've decided to give the game a shot. I find the game reasonably enjoyable in terms of gameplay but I feel that I am somewhat at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the story as I didn't really play any Final Fantasy games growing up and thus know very little about the universe as a whole. Is the story in any way connected to previous installments of the franchise or is it a standalone story with no ties to the Final Fantasy games preceding it?

Final Fantasy Games except for very few exceptions are self-contained. You won't miss anything in FFXIV's Story by not having played any other Final Fantasy Game. There are a few nods here and there to other games but nothing substantial, i.e. Doma was a place in FF6, Golden Saucer was in FF7, Triple Triad was in FF8, etc

[Irian]

As someone who loves FFXIV....yeah I kind of agree OP. Those ARR quests are cancer.

Honestly I think they need to go back and prune the hell out of them, or give an option to go past them. Maybe turn the whole Doman Refugee part into a sidequest and not a part of the MSQ. A lot of it is pretty inconsequential to the story and was more or less just filler.

If it's any consolation, there isn't another ARR > HW story drought, it's all pretty good and interesting, especially Heavensward.

As far as Skill Speed goes, I wouldn't suggest trying to stack it to try and reach a WoW-like GCD. At 70 you're probably going to feel like you wish you had more time in between your abilities, honestly. Assuming you play totally perfectly Skill Speed is still pretty weak compared to Crit and DH like you said.

That being said I do think it's possible to reach something like 1.4-1.5 with enough overmelding and such, but man would that feel bad to play.

Since I got the starter edition for "free" through twitch prime I've decided to give the game a shot. I find the game reasonably enjoyable in terms of gameplay but I feel that I am somewhat at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the story as I didn't really play any Final Fantasy games growing up and thus know very little about the universe as a whole. Is the story in any way connected to previous installments of the franchise or is it a standalone story with no ties to the Final Fantasy games preceding it?

Final Fantasy games almost never have anything to do with each other, so you're not really missing anything. I mean, there are a few iconic character names and creatures like chocobos, moogles and such but it's more just cute nods than anything worth paying attention to.

If you feel a bit lost it might be because ARR kind of cut out the story of 1.0 FFXIV. Summed up: Continent of Eorzea fought against Garlemald, moon opened up, Bahamut came out and caused an apocalypse that massacred both Garlemald and Eorzea both. Now Eorzea's trying to recover and you're here to help and explore. Garlemald is a bunch of Star Wars douchebags.

[Senphiroth1134]

Took my ninja through all of the cancerous 2.x patch quests in ARR and got to heavensward, it only took me about 3 weeks of being bored to shit. Eventually I started skipping all dialogue and cutscenes to save time on my days off.

Easily the worst questing experience I think I've had in an MMO. It is such a shame too because the game is great, but by god the questing is atrocious just talk to a guy teleport somewhere else and talk to another guy and I repeated that like 5000 times no joke.

Man they really need to fix that because it makes the game look BAD when it's not. Now I will enjoy HSward and start my journey towards stormblood.. wish me luck I hope the questing gets much better.

I am guessing it will since I will not be faced with 250 MSQ back to back once I catch up to recent patches. I am just glad to be getting exp again outside of dailies.

A random question too does anyone know what you can get a NIN gcd to? I am currently 2.0 gcd which feels good but could be faster, I am hoping with enough skill speed in end game is possible to get like 1.5 ?Or is skill speed just not a good enough stat to warrant it and instead stack crit/direct hit etc?

I can't believe it takes a whole day to do maint and its my last day off rip..

Heavenwsward is indeed horrendous in many ways but I 'm figuring out a solution...

I think it's all about hitting the first zone a lot and stuff like that... there's a fe w repeatable quests if I remember right and a few other things.

[Binaris]

the ARR shit is painful... the heavensward is good

look at it this way...

--going to the store to buy condoms..

---driving home after buying the condoms..

---opening the box of condoms and putting it on...

Thats all work right there ^^^^^

but you know what comes after that though right?

She changes her mind?

[Lodreh]

...While, "a ton" might be a bit exaggerated...

Let's say the average person that plays weighs ~ 100 lbs... that means 20 people would be a ton... yeah it's entirely possible for the number of people that play that at least 20 find it boring enough to quit.

[Professor Issu]

She changes her mind?

She's already asleep.

[Sangris]

I finally went through this whole ordeal myself and god am I relieved. Easily one of the worst video game experiences of my life. What were they thinking of making you have to run like a billion errand quests where you just run around talking to people with maybe a quest to kill 3 mobs once in a while. These quests alone are reason enough for me never to create another character and level all future jobs on the same one (not that I wouldn't have done that anyway).

It's a shame, the game is really good so far (can't say how the endgame is though), but these quests really robbed me of any will to live.

[Onikaroshi]

I finally went through this whole ordeal myself and god am I relieved. Easily one of the worst video game experiences of my life. What were they thinking of making you have to run like a billion errand quests where you just run around talking to people with maybe a quest to kill 3 mobs once in a while. These quests alone are reason enough for me never to create another character and level all future jobs on the same one (not that I wouldn't have done that anyway).

It's a shame, the game is really good so far (can't say how the endgame is though), but these quests really robbed me of any will to live.

Well, TBF at the time it was done in sections not all at once, it's only when you go to do all the quests back to back that you realize how horribad it is.

[Sangris]

Well, TBF at the time it was done in sections not all at once, it's only when you go to do all the quests back to back that you realize how horribad it is.

Oh, I am aware of this. I am also told that they are going to change this once the new expansion releases. I just cannot understand how it took 3 addons to do something about it and not make a hotfix where you can skip most of these quests (save maybe the ones for the catch-up gear and important story moments, but I seriously don't need to observe Tataru failing her Arcanist training). Even if you skip all cutscenes, the sheer amount of errand quests cost me around 2,5 days of playing without any progress other than leveling from my daily duties.

[Onikaroshi]

Oh, I am aware of this. I am also told that they are going to change this once the new expansion releases. I just cannot understand how it took 3 addons to do something about it and not make a hotfix where you can skip most of these quests (save maybe the ones for the catch-up gear and important story moments, but I seriously don't need to observe Tataru failing her Arcanist training). Even if you skip all cutscenes, the sheer amount of errand quests cost me around 2,5 days of playing without any progress other than leveling from my daily duties.

It's because they want to cut out all the back and forth without losing the story, so less "go here and listen to this guy, and then back".

[Wrecktangle]

Honestly, if they could find a way to utilize Linkpearls for remote quest turn in and cutscene utilization/discussion and just push some quests to side quests out of the MSQ I'd be willing to bet it would be fine. Handwave it as the echo allows to experience linkpearl discussions as if we were there.

[Merie]

WoW user here. I too jumped on the Twitch Prime train. The 100 quest chain after "Ultima Weapon" was awful, especially near the beginning. It was so bad, I nearly gave up on 14. It was pretty good near the very tail end of the chain, but they definitely need to prune about half the quests in this gauntlet because a lot of them are "Leave this continent to go to another continent to click on an item then come back" bullcrap.

With that said, starting with the "coup", it was a blast ever since. Fleeing Ulda and crossing through the gates of Ishgard made Heavensward feel epic right off the bat and the story was probably the best I've experienced in an MMO. Square proved to me their writing was far more subtle and nuanced that Blizzard's ever will be. And the final confrontation with Nidhogg at the end of it where the soundtrack changes in all of the three phases may just be the most epic moment I've yet had in a MMO.

[kaelleria]

I just came back and finished up the 100 quest chain... It's definitely a slog, but I'm glad I finished it. I was 51 before I quit last time and I forgot how nice it is to have encounters that aren't just faceroll.

Like it's sort of satisfying to do something non-optional you could fail and completing it.