Y'all weren't kidding about the 7th astral era (post-ARR) questlines hahaha!

[Omedon]

So again, thank you all who encouraged me to re-activate with your honest answers! I'm enjoying my summoner-turned-red-mage, have enjoyed steamrolling old fights (Garuda, Ultima) that stressed me out back in the day, but now I come to the post ARR, pre HW quests and... man... y'all weren't kidding about this stretch! Literally 100 quests on an XP bar tuned for next expansion's numbers while granting ARR level numbers of XP on the low end!

I have my christmas vacation time cut out for me it seems!

I have decided that I'm going to stop being stingy (to a point) with my money and start using teleport more often instead of other means of travel. That said, does anyone have any other pointers that may not seem as intuitive to help me get through this without actually skipping the story?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Yeah, there is a ton of padding. Fortunately, it starts picking up 2.3, and starts getting really good in 2.4.

It might also help if you work on other storylines while progressing through the MSQ, such as the Crystal Tower story (which is short and can be done in a few hours), or the Hildibrand storyline (comedy adventure).

[Katchii]

So again, thank you all who encouraged me to re-activate with your honest answers! I'm enjoying my summoner-turned-red-mage, have enjoyed steamrolling old fights (Garuda, Ultima) that stressed me out back in the day, but now I come to the post ARR, pre HW quests and... man... y'all weren't kidding about this stretch! Literally 100 quests on an XP bar tuned for next expansion's numbers while granting ARR level numbers of XP on the low end!

I have my christmas vacation time cut out for me it seems!

I have decided that I'm going to stop being stingy (to a point) with my money and start using teleport more often instead of other means of travel. That said, does anyone have any other pointers that may not seem as intuitive to help me get through this without actually skipping the story?

Queue for dungeons while slogging through it, helps break the monotony, also I always preferred doing those quests as a tank or healer so that when a story required trial or dungeon came up I didn't have to sit in queue for too long.

As Val already mentioned too, doing side content helps a lot too. The Hildebrand quests are a treat if you like that style of humor (I love it), they're some of my favorite parts of the game and playing through the ARR version of the quests literally had me laughing out loud.

Teleport as often as you like, just set your preferred destinations and if you have a one-time password authenticator linked to your account set your free destination to Mor Dhona. Do enough hunts to get the mount speed upgrades as they increase your speed by a LOT.

[Littleraven]

The post ARR stuff is terrible. I was stuck there for months because I would start playing and then get bored and take a break. It gets amazing the closer you get to Heavensward though so keep pushing! Heavensward alone has one of my favorite moments in the entire series.

[Thage]

As others mentioned, the 2.0-2.3 quests drag hard, but they get better from 2.3 onwards. This is something Yoshi-P has explicitly mentioned as badly needing streamlining, as the massive amount of quests and cinematics, while good at the time for keeping players fed during ARR's lifecycle, haven't aged well and present a major leveling block. I believe he's mentioned before that he doesn't like that players can feel pressured to buy the story and level skip potions just to avoid the 7th Astral Era quests (he also doesn't like when players feel pressured to force themselves to play the game, and feels like taking breaks should be encouraged if you're not having fun, for what it's worth). There's no solid ETA beyond they very badly want to get it done during Shadowbringers but can't 100% commit to it until they have a better idea of how long consolidating will take and how best to address the problem exactly.

I, too, recommend breaking up the quest grind with dungeons, trials, and Frontlines to avoid going mad or burning out. Things do get better once you hit Heavensward, and while Stormblood is a mixed bag, Shadowbringers is the writing team back in top form (the lead writer on Shadowbringers wrote the Azim Steppe, one of the best-received portions of the Stormblood leveling story).

- - - Updated - - -

Queue for dungeons while slogging through it, helps break the monotony, also I always preferred doing those quests as a tank or healer so that when a story required trial or dungeon came up I didn't have to sit in queue for too long.

As Val already mentioned too, doing side content helps a lot too. The Hildebrand quests are a treat if you like that style of humor (I love it), they're some of my favorite parts of the game and playing through the ARR version of the quests literally had me laughing out loud.

Teleport as often as you like, just set your preferred destinations and if you have a one-time password authenticator linked to your account set your free destination to Mor Dhona. Do enough hunts to get the mount speed upgrades as they increase your speed by a LOT.

Another thing to consider is at least one push from floors 1-50 of POTD, especially after doing Tam-Tara Deepcroft on Hard.

[mario710]

Unfortunately, along with the myriad of net code based issues that perpetually barrages this game, the abysmal questing experience during ARR further exacerbates the conundrum that is the FFXIV development team.

Believe me, New Game+ (ARR edition) couldn't come sooner.

[beanman12345]

idk those quests kinda burnt me out. I love the game, I just finished the end of the post arr a few days ago, gave it an 8/10 on the review thread in the gaming forums here, but now i feel like i'm gonna take a break. maybe it was the several 45 minute dps queues. they were relatively quick like 15 minutes until i got into ARR post questlines.

[GreenJesus]

Holy shit.. you didnt use your teleport??? How could you possibly do 100 of those quests with normal transportation. You sir are a masochist. I'm impressed with your dedication to being stingy. Justify it this way: sooner you finish those quests the sooner you can do the quests work better gold rewards.

[Linuriel]

So again, thank you all who encouraged me to re-activate with your honest answers! I'm enjoying my summoner-turned-red-mage, have enjoyed steamrolling old fights (Garuda, Ultima) that stressed me out back in the day, but now I come to the post ARR, pre HW quests and... man... y'all weren't kidding about this stretch! Literally 100 quests on an XP bar tuned for next expansion's numbers while granting ARR level numbers of XP on the low end!

I have my christmas vacation time cut out for me it seems!

I have decided that I'm going to stop being stingy (to a point) with my money and start using teleport more often instead of other means of travel. That said, does anyone have any other pointers that may not seem as intuitive to help me get through this without actually skipping the story?

I have to be honest, I don't even understand your post. But I also haven't played FF14 that much. I gave up at level 35 because combat was too slow and the story was cringy and boring.

[Katchii]

idk those quests kinda burnt me out. I love the game, I just finished the end of the post arr a few days ago, gave it an 8/10 on the review thread in the gaming forums here, but now i feel like i'm gonna take a break. maybe it was the several 45 minute dps queues. they were relatively quick like 15 minutes until i got into ARR post questlines.

This is why I always advocate that for people who are willing, to level a tank or healer for your first play through the story, specifically to get through the story required dungeons and trials because as a DPS those wait times can be brutal and really take the piss out of the story and/or fun.

[Tenjen]

Not to mention they did cut down a lot of the quests.

Like I enjoyed the story line where we got to spend some quiet time with the others, do regular stuff and speak with them. it felt like being part of the scions through daily life without some world crises in motion. with just a hint here and there that something is off.

However those quests are still entirely distinct from the meaningless filler.

[lollerlaban]

idk those quests kinda burnt me out. I love the game, I just finished the end of the post arr a few days ago, gave it an 8/10 on the review thread in the gaming forums here, but now i feel like i'm gonna take a break. maybe it was the several 45 minute dps queues. they were relatively quick like 15 minutes until i got into ARR post questlines.

I'm impressed. Not even at 4 in the morning does my dps queue go above 30 minutes when we're talking about normal levelling or 50/60/70 dungeons. Alliance raids and MSQ? Sure

[Super Kami Dende]

Post-ARR is literally the one thing I warn all my new friends coming to FFXIV about. had 2 recently go through it, but they broke it up with some Hildebrand and DoH/L leveling.

[beanman12345]

I'm impressed. Not even at 4 in the morning does my dps queue go above 30 minutes when we're talking about normal levelling or 50/60/70 dungeons. Alliance raids and MSQ? Sure

I actually find my queue's the fastest at off hours, early in the morning mid afternoon. It's prime time friday/saturday night that takes a while for me as a dps. but even then you are right, it's not that bad for vast majority of the time. but I Tried Ramuh took 52 minutes wait time and Shiva was about 40 the next night. It was just those two. I thought it so odd do a daily trial and it takes less then 5 minutes even as a dps most of the time now that i'm past those post ARR quests. haven't taken much of a break either, already 56. love HW so far!

[Different Strokes]

I have to be honest, I don't even understand your post. But I also haven't played FF14 that much. I gave up at level 35 because combat was too slow and the story was cringy and boring.

FFXIV combat starts out slow, but picks up as you level, and by the time you're max level it's pretty frantic. It's like in WoW, where you only get to use 2 or 3 abilities at your low levels, but gain more as you go along. There's a lot of skill weaving in between global cooldowns. It takes some getting used to the slower GCD, but the story is worth it after the post ARR slog. Unless you just hate anime and anything Japan because you simply hate it and that's it. Then yeah, it might not be for you.

[Talrath]

I tink an even fix for arr questing would be that at lvl 40 they player gets the increased mount speed. That way no1 has to run for long distances and eventually stop playing. The increased speed is irrelevant for those who are already lvl 80 and right now if they want to go to a ARR zone, they just teleport and dont run. They dont have gil issue etc etc. New players have gil issues, so give them increased mount speed to get through ARR a bit faster.

This is just a bandage.

- - - Updated - - -

About the combat system, well I do understand them making it slow at the beginning because what if a person plays it who has never played a mmorpg. Many people who switch from Wow and GW2 unjustified bash on FF14 for it. But it starts to shine to higher lvl you are, eventually you'll have so many buttons you have to press during the global cooldown that you need to research what the best rotation is for you skill speed or spell speed.

[lollerlaban]

I tink an even fix for arr questing would be that at lvl 40 they player gets the increased mount speed. That way no1 has to run for long distances and eventually stop playing. The increased speed is irrelevant for those who are already lvl 80 and right now if they want to go to a ARR zone, they just teleport and dont run. They dont have gil issue etc etc. New players have gil issues, so give them increased mount speed to get through ARR a bit faster.

This is just a bandage.

- - - Updated - - -

About the combat system, well I do understand them making it slow at the beginning because what if a person plays it who has never played a mmorpg. Many people who switch from Wow and GW2 unjustified bash on FF14 for it. But it starts to shine to higher lvl you are, eventually you'll have so many buttons you have to press during the global cooldown that you need to research what the best rotation is for you skill speed or spell speed.

Except it would be entirely pointless. Increased mount speed makes no difference when the quests are "Do A, go 5 meters, talk to B, go 3 meters, talk to C"
Rinse and repeat. Anything in other zones is just Aetheryte and go to the questgiver 4 meters away from it

[Bigby]

The problem with the patches is definitely the amount of pointless, tedious busy work and teleporting.

2.1 - Most of this could probably be cut, save meeting F'lhaminn, Good King Moggle and actually moving into the Rising Stones.

2.2 - I think could mostly be kept. Yes, there's a lot of busy work/running back and forth but this is exasserbated by 2.1 being full of it. The introduction to the Domans was done and helped me to give a damn about Doma itself come Stormblood as well as appreciate the familiar faces. A bit of the back-and-forth with the chocobos could be chopped, especially the musk stuff.

2.3 - I'd keep the Ul'dah quests since they set up the Ala Mhigan problem. 99% of the Ramuh stuff can be cut save attuning because his plot doesn't go anywhere save reminding us "not all Primals necessarily want to kill everyone". The Crystal Brave volunteers I'm so-so on, since it does set up a good amount of plot and without meeting the characters in their 'original' locations they're a bit more "Huh? Who was that?" Otherwise they could all enlist in Mor Dhona like Ilberd does.

2.4 - The traitor quests don't really go anywhere except throw shade on a certain someone's double-betrayal later, so they could probably get the chop. The rest sets up the Ishgard storyline, including some major characters so would need to be kept. It was funny having Iceheart voiced by Thalyssra for all of one patch though.

2.5 - Too important to the overall plot to really trim anything here, since it establishes White Aethyerite and more of Ishgard. You don't really hear any complaints about this patch though.

[Dakhath]

5.3 will cut this down quite a bit, I went through this slog almost a year ago and I still remember how "fun" it is. The story gets much better afterward though, keep pushing.

[PingPong]

I recently got back in to this game cuz steam winter sale and dam the there is so much filter fetch quest in the arr main quest senario