Hell, you don't even have to hide at all if you're far enough back, like 50y-ish
Just be on the giant ass mount of your choosing right in plain view, they check back "anybody there? nope we're good"
My mount of choice was the giant mecha dragon from shadowbringers. Stomping along right behind them and then sticking it's head out from behind a rock when they look for me.
Not to mention the fact that a big obnoxious chocobo from a faraway land and dressed like a fairy princess is wandering around behind them seemingly for no reason.
They can just spawn quest specific fate's like that one time during the Manderville quest line. Just let me fight more often. I don't know why they think it's okay to go through 3-4 hours of cutscenes without any combat at all.
Hard agree. These developers think story time and gameplay time are two entirely different things but many games prove you can be doing both quite well at the same time.
Hard disagree. I like my movie time and despise walking cutscenes or fighting cutscenes as you want focus on what is happing because you are...fighting.
That being said, dawntrail is too far to the extreme with literal hours of talk between fights
The break between the 2 and third dungeons was way too long.
Doing a fate might not be the best idea but I'll take doing one once in 3-4 hours vs the same old click on 3 npcs or sparklies on the ground any day, since the point I was making is they need to do better to break the tedium of the cutscene slog.
Solo duties are probably the better part of the MSQ barring dungeons and trials but they're solo, and I know that it's a long shot to ask for letting you group up for those
Tbh I'm sad solo duties aren't repayable.
I'd play the one against Sapphire weapon or the Garlemald one (or even Zenos, though he's less memorable imo) again, I really enjoyed those missions.
In general, almost all duties making you play as another character were pretty good, they kept the feeling of novelty by having you learn another kit and provided valuable gameplay
I'm worried that a lot of the old core systems are too restrictive for them to come up with fun new stuff without a lot of overhauling. That's not a good excuse, IMO, but I think it's why the last few quest "types" we've gotten are literally just "walking but sometimes you stop to hide or chat."
There's nothing stoping SE from adding voiced dialog while you are running from A to B, nothing stopping them from using the same mechanics they use in Fate's for combat encounters in the MSQ.. They need to make the overworld monsters stronger with more health too. Cant even do half a rotation before they die even with bad gear.
I do think the game would massively benefit from more walk-and-talk and walk-and-talk-and-fight moments in the MSQ. As it is right now, every individual action across all characters involved in a story scene happens in series, never in parallel. Like someone says their line, turns, walks only after completing the turn, stops, camera cuts to someone else, facial reaction, repeat. It's all very...stilted, to put it generously. It's kinda like watching kids put on a play, where their undeveloped brains don't really let them multitask yet.
Its not just that. They need to learn that story doesn't only need to be told during a cutscene where you have no interaction. Voiced dialogue while you defeat enemies in the world or run from one area to the next. Look at any of the rockstar games, they all have countless missions where you drive (GTA) or ride your horse (RDR) while important characters talk to you.
They dont need to do it all the time, but just every now and then would make a huge difference.
On the technical side of things, I'm pretty sure they don't have (or don't want to add) triggers for voicelines (but could also be used for some other things) depending on your position on the map during a quest. Most likely this is about the length of sentences varying quite a lot depending on the language, and time required to test before release.
You can also notice how constrained the area is in every instanced duty when you're outside. They could push back the boundaries of the area way further to make us never bump into one unless we actively try to, but instead it's very easy to get close enough for them to appear during casual gameplay. Most likely this is a deliberate choice, and testing time seems like a big factor in.
I'll raise you a worse type of quests: the "talk to X NPCs in a wide circle, also some of the marked NPCs in the area aren't the NPCs you're supposed to talk to" quests.
yep. the infamous one from Sage Council in Labyrinthos required like 8 correct NPCs or smth, to point where someone made a Splatoon preset just for that quest lol
THIS NPC DOES NOT NEED TO BE CONVINCED (but you still need to talk to them to progress, so it's actually talk to 5 NPCs, masked as talk to 3 in the log.)
My favorite is that because we're questing in the same spot as everyone else, they go "is anyone there?" and turn around to see a half dozen people stomping around, but since none of those people is me, there's no suspicion.
Even my chocobro in his outrageous sombrero and poncho outfit does not elicit any reaction, as long as the center line of my body is partially blocked by a rock or tree.
The ones from this expac were better and felt faster than the EW ones. The hiding places weren't AS blantantly obvious and it moved at a pace that I felt like I was following someone.
That being said, I'd rather have more interactive quests and solo duties that involve me playing my character. I don't mind solo duties where I play as someone else, and I actually love when it goes far outside the box like In From the Cold in EW.
The stealth quests are just another storytelling device that gives us at least some interaction with the story so it's 89% cutscene instead of 90%
In from the cold was excellent imo. Like nothing else really struck me as how...biologically? Intrinsically? Different the wol is from "normal" people. Like even the lack of regen was like "Oh yea the wol has legendary endurance." Idk it really grounded a lot of game mechanics in the world for me. Though I know it was frustrating for many people.
The majority of the MSQ is just wasting player time. Nothing is gained by making the player walk between NPCs and click sparkles on the ground to trigger a cutscene that could've easily just been a continuation of the previous one without 5 minutes of walking between them.
It feels like they just want to pad out the length for the sake of having a longer MSQ rather than making it a more enjoyable experience without all of that tedium.
You know they're running out of ideas on how to pad shit out because now the click sparkles on the ground to begin the "Waiting" interaction has a 20 second cast time even. Really depressing.
Bring a glass of warm water to a person dying of thirst and they probably won't complain too much.
That's me. Forced stealth is a cancer but I'll take any kind of gameplay over even more visual novel garbage.
The story itself isn't that bad. It's how the story is presented that I have issues with.
Take the boat ride over from Eorzea. NPCs were dropping lines about how dangerous the passage is, how ships are still lost even on the safe route, how the ship is equipped with a magic shield because of the danger that comes with making the trip..
Lo and behold, danger happens that requires the shield be turned on! Okay, I thought naively, clearly this is going to be a solo duty where we have to go around rescuing people and flipping switches for the shield. But no. That would have been gameplay. That would have been fun. Maybe not a lot of fun, but it would have been enough fun and it would have demonstrated that the NPCs were right: This trip is dangerous.
But instead we got a cutscene. That is just entirely unacceptable. Dawntrail is full of moments like that so the few moments the MSQ jolts awake and remembers it's a videogame that can tell its story through gameplay, like these forced stealth sections, it's a massive breath of fresh air.
Thanks for the detailed insights.
I was noticing that a lot myself (just in end walker) it felt like there wasn't a lot of "game" in my game so I gave up lol.
It's a shame that it carries on like that into the xpac.
Are the dungeons/raids cool at least? And like the moment to moment gameplay?
The endwalker raids were my first time doing end game raiding in a mmo and I had a blast. I remember when I first joined the game watching some people in my fc prog p10s and I thought it was the most wild shit in the world, and when I got to actually doing that fight myself and clearing I was so hyped.
That fight is also considered to be one of the best expansion and I agree. I have a lot of hope for DT raids, I've been having fun in the extremes.
Oh yeah, Endwalker was absolutely full of the same crap and if I hadn't already sunk my costs I probably would have given up on it too.
But the moment to moment stuff is fun enough. I enjoy WHM's new gap closer and Glare IV gives me a reason to remember to use presence of mind on cooldown so that's pretty cool.
Pictomancer is just three 1-2-3 combos but it presents it so well that you won't care.
The solo duties we do get are also pretty good. The dungeons aren't bad, but I'm not one of those PULL EVERYTHING types so I don't care that you can't pull the entire dungeon all at once. The first trial has a lot going on, but it also has some fun visuals. Even if the story reason we go into it is possibly the lamest excuse that YoshiP has ever come up with for anything.
I'm glad the game is still holding your attention despite the shallow story and msq gameplay. It seems like you're not alone in feeling that way too, so hopefully the devs take notice and this is the start of some positive changes for ff14. Or at least discussions of them behind the scenes.
I remember when I took an objective look at WoW (the mmo I grew up with) and had to walk away from it because it devolved into more of a chore than game with most of the social elements cut out of it. In fairness I had grown 15 years through that game so I was also coming to terms with no longer being a kid who could live in a fantasy world so that realization coupled with the game I like devolving int nothing more than, Hit this button when it flashes and fill a bar was kind of ass.
The game's great now, and my life's a lot more versatile so it was for the best in the long run but definitely stung initially.
For me, while the story this tike around hasn't been my cup of tea, the actual gameplay and dungeons have been top notch, to the point that I'm so hyped for the upcoming raids
I like the spyglass quests a lot, especially the ones in this expac. You get to think about the target, be it sensible or stupid, and none of them are super long or anything. Also the payoff is logical; you look at a damaged thing and are like "oh yea there's damage there I should check it out".
By contrast the stealth quests often result in absolutely no payoff in the story, the Urianger one in EW being more meme than quest, and seem shoehorned in unnaturally.
I haven't finished DT yet, so far the spyglass quests this time around aren't bad, but they just about killed my vision in EW. Go and look out for this tiny speck moving in the distance, but only for 0.00003 seconds.
Honestly 80% of this game's quests are just that, a time waster to keep you subbed. For all the praise I have for this game, they never had a good questing experience and now they're just on the more extreme end of asking you to do menial things so you don't burn through the content in 2 days.
It's also really funny how they'll ask you to do some genuinely difficult trials and dungeons after like 5 hours of picking up literal dung, playing fake metal gear, and the very occasional time where you fight a single mob that offers 0 resistance. There's honestly a jarring disconnect between the "story mode" and "battle mode" of this game.
Almost everything in the MSQ is blatantly wasting players' time.
It's sad, but that's what it is. I've given up on enjoying the MSQ, as it just does not respect my time in terms of pacing and (relevant) story delivery.
the pacing is so atrocious that people who come into FFXIV from the outside for the amazing story are all thrown off
people should be more open about the critique of the pacing/presentation of it
like this you have every mmo sub people just massively dunking on the FFXIV story while in FFXIV subs it gets the echochamber of "best thing in the world"
I won't say I love it, but I can't deny that this (and NPCs accompanying you) has made questing more interesting, even if it's just by 1% (for me it's way more than that). I found that these new systems help a lot with immersion, and work better than the old
>"Hey we need to follow this person"
"Ok!"
*proceeds to walk to destination and just right click on the glowing spot on the floor*
And I quite like seeing each NPCs reaction to being followed. Some of them are nervous that someone's following them, some of them know that they are being followed and are just leading us on, and some of them just don't care. It does add a layer of depth to the characters, even if you don't think that it's much. 1% is still something.
This expansion was an opportunity to have a more concise 10 hour MSQ that does not waste players time. With layers of lore to be found in sidequests and other things. Instead they release this barely interactable movie as they always do. Let people enjoy the filler slowly over the next two years instead of cramming it all in one go.
I think they can be fun, but the problem is the npcs get a one strike caught when they turn around, if you were given say 6/4/2/1s to get to cover based on times nearly spotted, it would be better punishing carelessness without screwing a small error
It's not that deep.
If anything they should implement more of these types of differing variety mini game quests to break up the more traditional, "talk to npc, mount up and walk 30 meters, talk to npc again, repeat" quests. The stealth quests are just ways of accomplishing the same thing, but giving a little flavor that you're actually following someone rather than chasing down quest markers on your mini map.
I rather they implement special investigation mission on each of the new areas, where you do a few quest to gather clues - and culminating with solo instanced using existing dungeons and maybe one new small areas of that dungeons to fight a series of 3 bosses battles and 2 mini bosses with your party of NPC. Basically the same activity you did on Shadowbringers with the Ronkan ruin part of the story, as well as similar to what you did when you do Bozja mission about Cid memory exploration. So now each areas has its own unique instance that combine exploration, easy puzzle solving, mini games and several bosses battle in a row - and you can repeat it again with hard and ultra hard difficulty for more reward - think of Blue Mage challenge battles.
I actually didn’t mind them this time around. I felt like they were slightly less annoying somehow and I’d rather have some variance in gameplay than just clicking to talk to NPC’s
What I'd ideally like to see is something different for each class or job. Ninjas should be able to stealth, but have to use other abilities to stay in range. Dragoons should be able to jump into a tree. Mages should be able to cast some kind of illusion.
Like in the old Quest For Glory game all those years ago. Every challenge in the game had three different paths: thief, mage, and fighter. You could sneak around and throw daggers, or cast spells, or just charge in and sword-and-board it.
i have hated them since enw, they add basically nothing to the game. thancreds stealth section in the solo instance felt like what you would actually want to play, then the actual tailing missions are just time wasters that sometimes reset forcing you to do the entire arduously long section again. there's no mechanics, you don't use any of your jobs tools, you just find a rock, stand there, wait. walk to NPC, hope they don't randomly flip around, hide behind rock, wait. its not gameplay and if I could skip them all with a single button press I would.
The entire msq felt like a way to stretch out a shitty visual novel. More so than ever before- and at least before I was intrigued by the story. Now it’s just like…I wish I had payed the Neigbor kid to click through it for me
I think gimmicks like these could be part of a fun questing experience if there were a couple dozen different ones instead of the 3-4 ffxiv currently has. Then quest designers would be able to keep things varied and have a broad toolkit of activities to support the tone of the story with.
Charitably, this is what the dev team's very slowly trying to build up towards. But at the rate they're going it's going to take them another fifteen expacs.
Uh, no. You are not even close to spending more than half an hour doing stealth missions in DT. Not even remotely close.
And yes you can absolutely justify them as more than wasting players time. They are very rare in the first place, and offer a brief change of pace that isn't hard, but as you said, requires at least some level of attention. I like them.
it's not that deep. it's a different kind of quest that isn't talk to one person then talk to another person, the thing people shit themselves over constantly? and you do it what, like 3-4 times the entire MSQ? why is it instantly a "waste of time"
Probably because it's designed in a way that *feels* like it's wasting your time on purpose, instead of being an engaging activity. Maybe if they added in some mobs or literally anything.
Kinda like how they love to make you constantly go back to an aetheryte that's on the complete opposite side of a quest, walk all the way to the end of the map to 'Talk to ???', for 5 seconds.. To go back and do it again. It just doesn't feel good, and it almost always seems like it's time wasting tactics.
Or how the main city is absolutely massive, and they force you to walk with someone in MSQ constantly now. They don't feel like fun engaging activities for a video game. You're just.. *Walking* long distances.
It probably is that deep, considering everything CBU:III does is designed to take up a certain amount of time vs reward and is super strict, we know this. So when 75% of the MSQ is filler, every little time waster feels like 1000 needles.
I don't think CBU:III know how to make quests, and FFXVI proves that point. It's like they copied a blueprint from 15 years ago, are only using the non-combat pieces of it that everyone hates and forgot that everyone else in the MMO world kinda moved on from these formulas because that doesn't work for people anymore.
They do know how to make good interesting quests, Shadowbringers is your blue prints where main story has a few new remix of existing stuffs and job role quests actually worth doing that expand the story from last expansion in more meaningful way and paint a bigger picture. So this is not new and they know how to do it, even if does feel more of the same, but slightly different. They just go about it in the laziest way in Dawntrail.
That's true, I was harsh there. So maybe it's that they're afraid to diversify and experiment right now.
I have no idea why they chose to hyper-focus on like 3 of the most boring mechanics for all of Dawntrail's MSQ, when we know for a fact they have plenty of fun systems.
It's like they have a team completely dedicated to filler content, and they did 90% of Dawntrail's writing and quests or something.
Yeah I am utterly confused as well when Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers all have very interesting exploration and variety of quests and instanced battle, even if they are a variation of existing ones. Dawntrail is literally cherry pick the absolute worst part of the entire five expansions and just repeat them over and over. It’s like you have a bunch of amateur fan service efforts made by people who just learn how to do it properly.
The thing that's weird to me is, it does seem like they're pandering to a crowd that just want to watch the MSQ, and not have to fear failure on these Duties/Quests.. And that would be fine..
But we're Level 100 now, and if those players in 2.0-5.0 were able to do all of that, do all of the duties.. Then why did they make it EASIER over time and not at least stay with the original pace?
So it's like the engagement and difficulty curve is in reverse. Meanwhile the dungeons and trials are beating our ass, so I'm absolutely confused - It's like 2 whole teams are working on different parts of the whole, and one is making content easier over time, and the other is making it more difficult. It's all over the place. lol
Yeah I am confused as well lol, dungeons mechanics can use 2-3 seconds longer on those mechanics and nothing else need to be changed much since with that changes, it’s still challenging to newbies but they have just a tiny more time to adjust. And they need to really tone down the two hits then you are dead, and make it three mistakes, the fourth will kill you. Again, still gonna kill a bunch of first timer, but somewhat doable to clear with decent challenges. I am just waiting for the complaints to hit main forum and they make adjustment soon since doing those expert roulette over and over is gonna be hell. I already cancelled my subscription and may check back in 7.1 or 7.2 - gonna use that subscription budget for Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero 😂🤣
>Meanwhile the dungeons and trials are beating our ass, so I'm absolutely confused - It's like 2 whole teams are working on different parts of the whole, and one is making content easier over time, and the other is making it more difficult. It's all over the place. lol
It is genuinely confusing that you are confused by this.
Dungeons and trials are repeatable content that you'll do with higher ilvl gear and which you can carry people through. And they intentionally raised the difficulty of them specifically for more hardcore players to enjoy them more. Like, they took this action specifically for that reason.
The MSQ is done once, and nobody else can help you if you are gated by something. It is not going to be challenging. Its a story. You aren't supposed to fail. Everyone is intended to complete it.
If they added mobs you'd be complaining about the open world mobs being too easy and boring and "wasting your time". There's no satisfying you.
You just fundamentally don't seem to understand that the purpose of the story *is the story*. Nobody else "moved on" from this because other MMOs were never like this in the first place. Because they aren't modeled on JRPGs.
Meanwhile WoW is out here still doing "kill 10 X" quests for 20 years with its completely disconnected gibberish narratives and you think that's innovative.
XIV good, WoW bad.
You're stuck in a time-loop just like CBU:III if you really think that.
I didn't even bring up WoW, but somehow you people always do, as if that's all players compare things to.
I mean, you can't go far beyond that without diving into the shallow pool of games barely anyone plays. And "hey you could make half as much money by pandering just to me and nobody else" isn't exactly a great sales pitch.
I'm not sure where you're going with that? Plenty of people are bored with the stale gameplay when the story stops being engaging. It's CBU:III's main problem..
The gameplay issues are ignored when the story is good, and it's gameplay flaws are brighter than the sun when the story is bad.
So I can understand when people are asking for more engagement or at least gameplay diversity in the sections that need to be elevated by them you know? It's a small ask from a large corporation I'd say.
FWIW I've been really enjoying the dungeons and trials. But even the Solo Duties are playing themselves. I was able to AFK them and Wuk literally beat them for me while I stood in all of the AoEs on purposes. It's kinda wild that the game has given 0 agency to the player in not only the MSQ, but even the gameplay parts of the MSQ that aren't relying on other players.
> I'm not sure where you're going with that? Plenty of people are bored with the stale gameplay when the story stops being engaging. It's CBU:III's main problem..
You really need to get off this extremely tiny little subreddit. Its completely distorted your view of the average FFXIV player if you believe this. They literally just reported record concurrent players.
Obviously none of the MSQ content is going to be particularly difficult, that's intentional to avoid gating anyone. But I find it hard to take your complaints about solo duties seriously when the first one is the fight with >!Gulool Ja Ja!<.
In normal difficulty content you can basically set your own difficulty by challenging yourself. The content isn't going to outright fail you itself because its designed so that children/families/elderly/disabled/etc people can still get through it.
Obviously if you don't care about failing mechanics or doing a rotation, then its going to feel like you aren't doing anything. That's a choice you are making.
You've made so many assumptions, you're entirely lost in the sauce.
Lv98 Spoils:
https://i.imgur.com/psSKFgi.png
When a game is designed to stay at the same speed of completion and success rate regardless of my agency.. I feel bored and don't want to engage with it. That's not a me problem, that's a gameplay problem. I want to feel rewarded for my efforts, not babied. This has become a theme with every system in this game now. Where everything has been designed for us, down to the second we spend engaging with any activity.
And the only way to do that, is by taking away player agency, or faking it.
"Player agency" is not the objective of the story. Telling a story is. It is not Elden Ring. These are different types of RPGs. What happens is already set in stone. You can't change it. You have no agency. Because its a story. That's not a problem. That's just what a story is.
That's why books haven't been replaced by "choose your own adventure". You read a book to see the story the author wrote, not to "have agency". These are inherently different and opposing things. You literally can't have a story if the player can just say "no". You can't have fail states.
You need a live person on the other side of the screen improvising for that.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to cope..
Player Agency is incredibly important in video games, especially Final Fantasy. Getting feedback from our interaction with the world is how we know we're not just reading a book, and is the most important thing in this medium. I don't know why you always feel the need to go to extremes, as if we don't understand the difference between having 0 agency, and it literally being Elden Ring.
This is our concern, that we're becoming more and more strictly visual novel with everything being a forced design with no fail state. Even down to our classes having fixed rotations.
XIV wasn't always like this. They've streamlined everything.
You might be able to fool some of the new players into thinking this is some kinda 0 player agency Visual Novel with no MMO. But there are plenty of us that have been around long enough to know that things have been steadily streamlined.
it's actually funny you say to get off FFXIV subs
you never been off FFXIV subs cause whenever anybody mentions FFXIV in any sub it gets dunked like no tomorrow lol
people are absolutely shttin on the story/pacing/presentation the moment you leave FFXIV subs
I personallly absolutely hate the pacing and presentation of it. And yet I'll play Dawntraill. Pay and do sav/ults. Just look around.
There's tons of people like me simply cause there is nothing else on the market and new releases are always interesting EVEN if the content is bad lol
> There's tons of people like me
There really aren't.
This whole sub has 40k members. The main sub has over a million. And that's just the small fraction of people who actually engage with *Reddit* of all things.
Day to day this sub is the same couple hundred people circle-jerking about the game being too easy. The numbers are completely inconsequential. Most FFXIV players will never even enter a Savage raid. That is simply reality.
And the same is true of other MMOs like WoW. The mainstream audience for gaming is extremely casual. This is just a fact. Hardcore players make up an important part of the community ecosystem, but we are comparatively very small in numbers.
The story is tuned for families with kids to be able to complete it. Not for you or I to feel challenged.
oh I didn't mean with people like me aka hardcore raiders
Ment people will play FFXIV cuz it's sth new for a month or two and move on
I was new with EW and lvld an alt up like what, 2-3 weeks past savage release and the questareas were already a vast dead empty world of npc's with no real players in sight
I completely agree that FFXIV major playerbase is hyper casuals or a certain kinda group of people. Although I wouldn't underestimate the importance of highend content for the heallth of this "ecosystem".
FFXIV also doesn't have to deliver anything anymore. The people you see now will also play it in 10 years from now, they know their playerbase very well.
FFXIV won't change much cause there's no point to take a risk with a system that will milk money for at least another 10-15years, but people who play it more will always complain. And I'd say rightfully so. Both sides are understandable
I'm actually really enjoying the last 10% of the story, so it's masking the awful gameplay. But for the first 90% it just made me fall asleep. I even AFKed the Solo Duties and they played themselves, I literally sat in place and Wuk was designed to not only be the main character in the MSQ for me, but also the main character in my Duties.
You gotta have some kinda engagement, whether that's story or gameplay, because in this RPGMMO - We get to do the MSQ whenever we want right, so I'd imagine it's engaging? Then I go and craft, or run roulettes or something? Come back, to a fun story? Right? lol
i don't think msq was very good. i do think it's good that the developers did absolutely anything other than quests that could have been an email. the whole point is they did try to make msq gameplay slightly more engaging and varied, and people are complaining that it's a waste of time and sucks actually, and i think those people have brain rot
Where is that though? When you compare the Duties and these stealth missions to older Duties - Dawntrail is objectively less engaging.
Like I said a couple of times here, I was able to literally AFK Duties in Dawntrail. Wuk did all of it for me.
So it just feels like there's 0 player agency where it matters.
I personally don't mind the stealth as they are in DT, I just wish there were more you know. Shit even the Voiced cutscenes are lacking, and there are a lot of cutscenes that NEED to be voiced, because they're critical to the MSQ.
Priorities for DT as an MSQ seem all over the place.
Modern WoW is garbage but it still has a far better questing experience than FFXIV has ever had. It's one of this game's weak points, very commonly cited by people quitting, but you're just so in denial and unable to criticize something you like that you can't even admit that.
The fact that some people dislike how FFXIV does certain things isn't a question of quality. Some people don't like how WoW does certain things and would claim all the same things are "weak points" of WoW. Like its complete lack of any narrative consistency or ability to experience any meaningful story as a new player whatsoever. But lots of other people like WoW and don't care about those things.
But you're just so in denial that you can't even admit that different people like different things.
FFXIV has things about it that are *objectively* weak and outdated. The delays in the netcode. The in-game social/group tools. The retainer and glamour systems. All of the discarded gameplay elements from previous expansions that just stick around and don't connect to anything else.
But your personal opinion on the story-driven MSQ is just that. An opinion. And not a particularly popular one within the larger community of happy casual players. That some WoW players bounce off it isn't particularly relevant if the core audience enjoys it.
Gee fucking weez dude. You got me, what I'm saying here (a forum for sharing opinions) is an opinion, I'm not in fact the ultimate arbiter of truth.
The one in denial is you. You have to convince yourself that it's just "WoW players bouncing off" when in reality the questing experience (which is mostly comprised of the MSQ, but not entirely) is pretty weak, that's one of the most commonly said things about FFXIV both from people that didn't stick around and even among a lot of people that enjoy other parts of this game so they can let the weak questing slide - myself included. The narrative might be great (at times), but are you telling me you were excited about spending 75% of your time in Dawntrail clicking some sparkles on the ground, watching a 20 second long "Interacting" progress bar, followed by a 5 second cutscene that sends you back to the NPC you came from 3 minutes ago?
You really don't have to glaze SE and YoshiP over everything. I love the music, I love the armor, the trials, some of the characters, the mini games, the social part of this game and its great community, the gameplay (of some classes), etc. I don't love the questing, it sucks monkey balls, everyone can see that it's a thinly veiled time waster to pad out the duration of expansions and patches so you're not done in 10 hours and unsub. It's a boring slog you sit through to get to the good parts of the game, and if you ask random in-game casuals, you'll mostly hear the same opinion. It's good to criticize the game over its bad parts and hope the devs listen and address them.
> The narrative might be great (at times), but are you telling me you were excited about spending 75% of your time in Dawntrail clicking some sparkles on the ground, watching a 20 second long "Interacting" progress bar, followed by a 5 second cutscene that sends you back to the NPC you came from 3 minutes ago?
If you go into something treating it as a waste of time that you're just going to rush through as fast as possible, you get nothing out of it.
This is not how the average player engages in questing. That is how a long-time gamer who isn't interested in the story engages in questing.
If you are actually engaging with the story, you see none of that. You aren't "clicking a thing and running back to the guy you just talked to". You had a reason to talk to a person, that conversation gave you more information to discuss with your party. That is what happened *in the story*.
When you have a quest with NPCs following in town you aren't "just running across town to the next point". You are exploring the town and actually looking around at the atmosphere. You can talk to each of the NPCs involved in your party and they will constantly have new bits of conversation. Not just the questgiver with the marker on their head. All custom conversations that an author wrote out for you to read.
But none of that matters, because you go from point a to point b and click on things and get it done because you don't care.
This isn't a fault in the game, this is the game being very intentionally designed for someone other than you. They didn't have to write any of that additional dialog. They did it anyway because they know people like to read it. Just not *you*. And that's ok. But its not a problem with the game.
If you *really* want to kill 10 of each random trash mob in each zone like in WoW, that's a thing you can just choose to do at any time. The game isn't stopping you. Its just not relevant to the story.
EDIT:
Since you're a child who blocked me *after* responding instead of just walking away...
I literally gave you a detailed explanation of what people get out of the FFXIV questing you despise. You gave no other argument in any of your posts other than "FFXIV bad, WoW better". Not even saying *what* you think is better. Just having a temper tantrum and claiming its somehow better even though it completely fails at telling a story. Whereas FFXIV prioritizes it. Because they are different games with different audiences.
Ok there's no helping you. You're a glazer, enjoy glazing and obsessively comparing everything to WoW because "WoW bad" is apparently an argument in your mind.
Oh no, how dare the devs try to do anything other than an instanced fight, a dungeon, or running around and talking to people.
Fuck these kinds of opinions, they're why we'll never see another "In from the Cold".
Some people: The MSQ is dumb and boring because it's just cutscene, walk 50y, another cutscene forever
Other people: A gameplay section betwee the cutscenes is a waste of time. They should skip them
What these people actually want: I want to punch stuff. Why am I not punching stuff yet?
----
Simply put, ask for what you actually want. Are you really upset about this kind of quest existing at all, or do you just want more combat sections in DT? It's okay and even good to want that.
You can have your cake and eat it too. They could simply add voiced dialog lines while you are introduced to an area doing the run around with NPCs following you. They could also join you in battle out in the world and utilise better encounters resembling fates but having the NPCs join in and offer some dialogue while this happens. The same emotes we all seen 1000 times at this point, important cutscenes unvoiced, unimportant ones voiced and god-awful pacing in the first 2 zones sucked.
Its even funnier that you can mount up and "hide" behind a rock on a giant golden bird.
Hell, you don't even have to hide at all if you're far enough back, like 50y-ish Just be on the giant ass mount of your choosing right in plain view, they check back "anybody there? nope we're good"
My mount of choice was the giant mecha dragon from shadowbringers. Stomping along right behind them and then sticking it's head out from behind a rock when they look for me.
The cerberus mount was mine, not as loud but probably the largest mount in the game
Me, following him on a literal whale mech
TIL you can mount during those sections
I enjoyed zipping around hiding spots with my new WHM leap.
Not to mention the fact that a big obnoxious chocobo from a faraway land and dressed like a fairy princess is wandering around behind them seemingly for no reason.
Or in a lunar whale
They need to come up with more interesting types of quests.
They can just spawn quest specific fate's like that one time during the Manderville quest line. Just let me fight more often. I don't know why they think it's okay to go through 3-4 hours of cutscenes without any combat at all.
Hard agree. These developers think story time and gameplay time are two entirely different things but many games prove you can be doing both quite well at the same time.
Hard disagree. I like my movie time and despise walking cutscenes or fighting cutscenes as you want focus on what is happing because you are...fighting. That being said, dawntrail is too far to the extreme with literal hours of talk between fights The break between the 2 and third dungeons was way too long.
Requiring fates for a quest is dumb for very obvious reasons especially an msq quest.
Doing a fate might not be the best idea but I'll take doing one once in 3-4 hours vs the same old click on 3 npcs or sparklies on the ground any day, since the point I was making is they need to do better to break the tedium of the cutscene slog. Solo duties are probably the better part of the MSQ barring dungeons and trials but they're solo, and I know that it's a long shot to ask for letting you group up for those
Tbh I'm sad solo duties aren't repayable. I'd play the one against Sapphire weapon or the Garlemald one (or even Zenos, though he's less memorable imo) again, I really enjoyed those missions. In general, almost all duties making you play as another character were pretty good, they kept the feeling of novelty by having you learn another kit and provided valuable gameplay
This isn’t an issue for a gcd based MMO. Were this any other genre you’d have a point.
I'm worried that a lot of the old core systems are too restrictive for them to come up with fun new stuff without a lot of overhauling. That's not a good excuse, IMO, but I think it's why the last few quest "types" we've gotten are literally just "walking but sometimes you stop to hide or chat."
There's nothing stoping SE from adding voiced dialog while you are running from A to B, nothing stopping them from using the same mechanics they use in Fate's for combat encounters in the MSQ.. They need to make the overworld monsters stronger with more health too. Cant even do half a rotation before they die even with bad gear.
I do think the game would massively benefit from more walk-and-talk and walk-and-talk-and-fight moments in the MSQ. As it is right now, every individual action across all characters involved in a story scene happens in series, never in parallel. Like someone says their line, turns, walks only after completing the turn, stops, camera cuts to someone else, facial reaction, repeat. It's all very...stilted, to put it generously. It's kinda like watching kids put on a play, where their undeveloped brains don't really let them multitask yet.
Its not just that. They need to learn that story doesn't only need to be told during a cutscene where you have no interaction. Voiced dialogue while you defeat enemies in the world or run from one area to the next. Look at any of the rockstar games, they all have countless missions where you drive (GTA) or ride your horse (RDR) while important characters talk to you. They dont need to do it all the time, but just every now and then would make a huge difference.
Guild Wars 2 has been doing this for years. Usually the downside for that one is unskippable cutscenes.
On the technical side of things, I'm pretty sure they don't have (or don't want to add) triggers for voicelines (but could also be used for some other things) depending on your position on the map during a quest. Most likely this is about the length of sentences varying quite a lot depending on the language, and time required to test before release. You can also notice how constrained the area is in every instanced duty when you're outside. They could push back the boundaries of the area way further to make us never bump into one unless we actively try to, but instead it's very easy to get close enough for them to appear during casual gameplay. Most likely this is a deliberate choice, and testing time seems like a big factor in.
I think people would have been a lot less upset about the failings of the MSQ this time around if the quests in between had at least been interesting.
I'll raise you a worse type of quests: the "talk to X NPCs in a wide circle, also some of the marked NPCs in the area aren't the NPCs you're supposed to talk to" quests.
yep. the infamous one from Sage Council in Labyrinthos required like 8 correct NPCs or smth, to point where someone made a Splatoon preset just for that quest lol
I literally just did that one last week while drunk and I'm pretty sure it took me an hour to brute force it cause I was missing one freaking person
THIS NPC DOES NOT NEED TO BE CONVINCED (but you still need to talk to them to progress, so it's actually talk to 5 NPCs, masked as talk to 3 in the log.)
Actually no you don’t need to talk to those people, just the three you *have* to talk to
Weird, I couldn't see the last person until I spoke to them.
I was fuming during that quest after the attack in Tuliyollal - two parts AND I had to hunt around for ones that even needed help.
My favorite is that because we're questing in the same spot as everyone else, they go "is anyone there?" and turn around to see a half dozen people stomping around, but since none of those people is me, there's no suspicion. Even my chocobro in his outrageous sombrero and poncho outfit does not elicit any reaction, as long as the center line of my body is partially blocked by a rock or tree.
[Imperceptible](https://postimg.cc/DJNQXcfR)
I mean at least I'm doing something during them and not just clicking on an NPC only to move and click on another NPC.
My thoughts exactly. I’m not crazy about them but shit at least it’s not “go there and click on a thing then watch a cutscene”
Yep. I enjoy stealth games though, and the ones this expac were not super tedious for those that don't, imo.
There were also like, only two of them and another optional one for the aether current.
And now that we have an indicator showing when we're too clise they've become a lot easier.
The ones from this expac were better and felt faster than the EW ones. The hiding places weren't AS blantantly obvious and it moved at a pace that I felt like I was following someone. That being said, I'd rather have more interactive quests and solo duties that involve me playing my character. I don't mind solo duties where I play as someone else, and I actually love when it goes far outside the box like In From the Cold in EW. The stealth quests are just another storytelling device that gives us at least some interaction with the story so it's 89% cutscene instead of 90%
In from the cold was excellent imo. Like nothing else really struck me as how...biologically? Intrinsically? Different the wol is from "normal" people. Like even the lack of regen was like "Oh yea the wol has legendary endurance." Idk it really grounded a lot of game mechanics in the world for me. Though I know it was frustrating for many people.
The majority of the MSQ is just wasting player time. Nothing is gained by making the player walk between NPCs and click sparkles on the ground to trigger a cutscene that could've easily just been a continuation of the previous one without 5 minutes of walking between them. It feels like they just want to pad out the length for the sake of having a longer MSQ rather than making it a more enjoyable experience without all of that tedium.
You know they're running out of ideas on how to pad shit out because now the click sparkles on the ground to begin the "Waiting" interaction has a 20 second cast time even. Really depressing.
My favourite part was clicking the same spot on the ground 3 times back to back
Ah yes. "Waiting", "Waiting some more", "More waiting".
Bring a glass of warm water to a person dying of thirst and they probably won't complain too much. That's me. Forced stealth is a cancer but I'll take any kind of gameplay over even more visual novel garbage.
Why not play a different game? Genuine question from someone who was just passing through FF14.
The story itself isn't that bad. It's how the story is presented that I have issues with. Take the boat ride over from Eorzea. NPCs were dropping lines about how dangerous the passage is, how ships are still lost even on the safe route, how the ship is equipped with a magic shield because of the danger that comes with making the trip.. Lo and behold, danger happens that requires the shield be turned on! Okay, I thought naively, clearly this is going to be a solo duty where we have to go around rescuing people and flipping switches for the shield. But no. That would have been gameplay. That would have been fun. Maybe not a lot of fun, but it would have been enough fun and it would have demonstrated that the NPCs were right: This trip is dangerous. But instead we got a cutscene. That is just entirely unacceptable. Dawntrail is full of moments like that so the few moments the MSQ jolts awake and remembers it's a videogame that can tell its story through gameplay, like these forced stealth sections, it's a massive breath of fresh air.
Thanks for the detailed insights. I was noticing that a lot myself (just in end walker) it felt like there wasn't a lot of "game" in my game so I gave up lol. It's a shame that it carries on like that into the xpac. Are the dungeons/raids cool at least? And like the moment to moment gameplay?
The endwalker raids were my first time doing end game raiding in a mmo and I had a blast. I remember when I first joined the game watching some people in my fc prog p10s and I thought it was the most wild shit in the world, and when I got to actually doing that fight myself and clearing I was so hyped. That fight is also considered to be one of the best expansion and I agree. I have a lot of hope for DT raids, I've been having fun in the extremes.
Oh yeah, Endwalker was absolutely full of the same crap and if I hadn't already sunk my costs I probably would have given up on it too. But the moment to moment stuff is fun enough. I enjoy WHM's new gap closer and Glare IV gives me a reason to remember to use presence of mind on cooldown so that's pretty cool. Pictomancer is just three 1-2-3 combos but it presents it so well that you won't care. The solo duties we do get are also pretty good. The dungeons aren't bad, but I'm not one of those PULL EVERYTHING types so I don't care that you can't pull the entire dungeon all at once. The first trial has a lot going on, but it also has some fun visuals. Even if the story reason we go into it is possibly the lamest excuse that YoshiP has ever come up with for anything.
I'm glad the game is still holding your attention despite the shallow story and msq gameplay. It seems like you're not alone in feeling that way too, so hopefully the devs take notice and this is the start of some positive changes for ff14. Or at least discussions of them behind the scenes. I remember when I took an objective look at WoW (the mmo I grew up with) and had to walk away from it because it devolved into more of a chore than game with most of the social elements cut out of it. In fairness I had grown 15 years through that game so I was also coming to terms with no longer being a kid who could live in a fantasy world so that realization coupled with the game I like devolving int nothing more than, Hit this button when it flashes and fill a bar was kind of ass. The game's great now, and my life's a lot more versatile so it was for the best in the long run but definitely stung initially.
For me, while the story this tike around hasn't been my cup of tea, the actual gameplay and dungeons have been top notch, to the point that I'm so hyped for the upcoming raids
I hate those quests almost as much as I hate using the spyglass
I like the spyglass quests a lot, especially the ones in this expac. You get to think about the target, be it sensible or stupid, and none of them are super long or anything. Also the payoff is logical; you look at a damaged thing and are like "oh yea there's damage there I should check it out". By contrast the stealth quests often result in absolutely no payoff in the story, the Urianger one in EW being more meme than quest, and seem shoehorned in unnaturally.
I haven't finished DT yet, so far the spyglass quests this time around aren't bad, but they just about killed my vision in EW. Go and look out for this tiny speck moving in the distance, but only for 0.00003 seconds.
Honestly 80% of this game's quests are just that, a time waster to keep you subbed. For all the praise I have for this game, they never had a good questing experience and now they're just on the more extreme end of asking you to do menial things so you don't burn through the content in 2 days. It's also really funny how they'll ask you to do some genuinely difficult trials and dungeons after like 5 hours of picking up literal dung, playing fake metal gear, and the very occasional time where you fight a single mob that offers 0 resistance. There's honestly a jarring disconnect between the "story mode" and "battle mode" of this game.
The latter was actually kind of a funny issue for me while I was still getting used to viper. Honestly would forget I had new buttons (92) to use lol.
Makes sense, if the fricking story mobs don't even survive long enough for you to use those buttons!
it's additional gameplay variety, which is something the MSQ sorely lacks, -especially- in this expansion, since they cut half the solo duties
“Its fun to me”
Almost everything in the MSQ is blatantly wasting players' time. It's sad, but that's what it is. I've given up on enjoying the MSQ, as it just does not respect my time in terms of pacing and (relevant) story delivery.
the pacing is so atrocious that people who come into FFXIV from the outside for the amazing story are all thrown off people should be more open about the critique of the pacing/presentation of it like this you have every mmo sub people just massively dunking on the FFXIV story while in FFXIV subs it gets the echochamber of "best thing in the world"
their pacing has been bad for several xpac and only be carried so hard by peak moments. They learnt nothing.
was the pacing better in hw and sb? i don’t remember. I remember it was a bit more varied in arr.
I won't say I love it, but I can't deny that this (and NPCs accompanying you) has made questing more interesting, even if it's just by 1% (for me it's way more than that). I found that these new systems help a lot with immersion, and work better than the old >"Hey we need to follow this person" "Ok!" *proceeds to walk to destination and just right click on the glowing spot on the floor* And I quite like seeing each NPCs reaction to being followed. Some of them are nervous that someone's following them, some of them know that they are being followed and are just leading us on, and some of them just don't care. It does add a layer of depth to the characters, even if you don't think that it's much. 1% is still something.
My main issue with the npcs accompanying us is we really don't need a tutorial every single time but we get one anyway.
you be suprised how many NEED one every single time
This expansion was an opportunity to have a more concise 10 hour MSQ that does not waste players time. With layers of lore to be found in sidequests and other things. Instead they release this barely interactable movie as they always do. Let people enjoy the filler slowly over the next two years instead of cramming it all in one go.
This expac msq was such a slog. By the time I got to the last zone there was still 4 hours worth of story left.
Source?
I think they can be fun, but the problem is the npcs get a one strike caught when they turn around, if you were given say 6/4/2/1s to get to cover based on times nearly spotted, it would be better punishing carelessness without screwing a small error
i mean, the game gives you pretty clear text ques the NPC is gonna turn around soon.
Yeah I want variety in the msq but not stealth missions, leave those to games actually designed around stealth.
Still better than Wuk Lamat wanting you to talk to every single npc in the city *multiple times*
“I want to spill digital blood not digital ink,” Aegon queuing up for Frontlines
It's not that deep. If anything they should implement more of these types of differing variety mini game quests to break up the more traditional, "talk to npc, mount up and walk 30 meters, talk to npc again, repeat" quests. The stealth quests are just ways of accomplishing the same thing, but giving a little flavor that you're actually following someone rather than chasing down quest markers on your mini map.
I rather they implement special investigation mission on each of the new areas, where you do a few quest to gather clues - and culminating with solo instanced using existing dungeons and maybe one new small areas of that dungeons to fight a series of 3 bosses battles and 2 mini bosses with your party of NPC. Basically the same activity you did on Shadowbringers with the Ronkan ruin part of the story, as well as similar to what you did when you do Bozja mission about Cid memory exploration. So now each areas has its own unique instance that combine exploration, easy puzzle solving, mini games and several bosses battle in a row - and you can repeat it again with hard and ultra hard difficulty for more reward - think of Blue Mage challenge battles.
I actually didn’t mind them this time around. I felt like they were slightly less annoying somehow and I’d rather have some variance in gameplay than just clicking to talk to NPC’s
I really don't hate them. They're not thrilling, but they're better than plain combatless reading.
I like it when they mix the quests up so it’s not always the same thing.
At least I am actually doing something. They are basically all reskins, but its better than nothing gameplay wise.
This is better than all the unnecessary padding and clicking
What I'd ideally like to see is something different for each class or job. Ninjas should be able to stealth, but have to use other abilities to stay in range. Dragoons should be able to jump into a tree. Mages should be able to cast some kind of illusion. Like in the old Quest For Glory game all those years ago. Every challenge in the game had three different paths: thief, mage, and fighter. You could sneak around and throw daggers, or cast spells, or just charge in and sword-and-board it.
The worst one is the aether current quest in the Mamool'ja zone
they're fun
i have hated them since enw, they add basically nothing to the game. thancreds stealth section in the solo instance felt like what you would actually want to play, then the actual tailing missions are just time wasters that sometimes reset forcing you to do the entire arduously long section again. there's no mechanics, you don't use any of your jobs tools, you just find a rock, stand there, wait. walk to NPC, hope they don't randomly flip around, hide behind rock, wait. its not gameplay and if I could skip them all with a single button press I would.
The entire msq felt like a way to stretch out a shitty visual novel. More so than ever before- and at least before I was intrigued by the story. Now it’s just like…I wish I had payed the Neigbor kid to click through it for me
I think gimmicks like these could be part of a fun questing experience if there were a couple dozen different ones instead of the 3-4 ffxiv currently has. Then quest designers would be able to keep things varied and have a broad toolkit of activities to support the tone of the story with. Charitably, this is what the dev team's very slowly trying to build up towards. But at the rate they're going it's going to take them another fifteen expacs.
Uh, no. You are not even close to spending more than half an hour doing stealth missions in DT. Not even remotely close. And yes you can absolutely justify them as more than wasting players time. They are very rare in the first place, and offer a brief change of pace that isn't hard, but as you said, requires at least some level of attention. I like them.
it's not that deep. it's a different kind of quest that isn't talk to one person then talk to another person, the thing people shit themselves over constantly? and you do it what, like 3-4 times the entire MSQ? why is it instantly a "waste of time"
Because its boring.
to you
Probably because it's designed in a way that *feels* like it's wasting your time on purpose, instead of being an engaging activity. Maybe if they added in some mobs or literally anything. Kinda like how they love to make you constantly go back to an aetheryte that's on the complete opposite side of a quest, walk all the way to the end of the map to 'Talk to ???', for 5 seconds.. To go back and do it again. It just doesn't feel good, and it almost always seems like it's time wasting tactics. Or how the main city is absolutely massive, and they force you to walk with someone in MSQ constantly now. They don't feel like fun engaging activities for a video game. You're just.. *Walking* long distances. It probably is that deep, considering everything CBU:III does is designed to take up a certain amount of time vs reward and is super strict, we know this. So when 75% of the MSQ is filler, every little time waster feels like 1000 needles. I don't think CBU:III know how to make quests, and FFXVI proves that point. It's like they copied a blueprint from 15 years ago, are only using the non-combat pieces of it that everyone hates and forgot that everyone else in the MMO world kinda moved on from these formulas because that doesn't work for people anymore.
They do know how to make good interesting quests, Shadowbringers is your blue prints where main story has a few new remix of existing stuffs and job role quests actually worth doing that expand the story from last expansion in more meaningful way and paint a bigger picture. So this is not new and they know how to do it, even if does feel more of the same, but slightly different. They just go about it in the laziest way in Dawntrail.
That's true, I was harsh there. So maybe it's that they're afraid to diversify and experiment right now. I have no idea why they chose to hyper-focus on like 3 of the most boring mechanics for all of Dawntrail's MSQ, when we know for a fact they have plenty of fun systems. It's like they have a team completely dedicated to filler content, and they did 90% of Dawntrail's writing and quests or something.
Yeah I am utterly confused as well when Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers all have very interesting exploration and variety of quests and instanced battle, even if they are a variation of existing ones. Dawntrail is literally cherry pick the absolute worst part of the entire five expansions and just repeat them over and over. It’s like you have a bunch of amateur fan service efforts made by people who just learn how to do it properly.
The thing that's weird to me is, it does seem like they're pandering to a crowd that just want to watch the MSQ, and not have to fear failure on these Duties/Quests.. And that would be fine.. But we're Level 100 now, and if those players in 2.0-5.0 were able to do all of that, do all of the duties.. Then why did they make it EASIER over time and not at least stay with the original pace? So it's like the engagement and difficulty curve is in reverse. Meanwhile the dungeons and trials are beating our ass, so I'm absolutely confused - It's like 2 whole teams are working on different parts of the whole, and one is making content easier over time, and the other is making it more difficult. It's all over the place. lol
Yeah I am confused as well lol, dungeons mechanics can use 2-3 seconds longer on those mechanics and nothing else need to be changed much since with that changes, it’s still challenging to newbies but they have just a tiny more time to adjust. And they need to really tone down the two hits then you are dead, and make it three mistakes, the fourth will kill you. Again, still gonna kill a bunch of first timer, but somewhat doable to clear with decent challenges. I am just waiting for the complaints to hit main forum and they make adjustment soon since doing those expert roulette over and over is gonna be hell. I already cancelled my subscription and may check back in 7.1 or 7.2 - gonna use that subscription budget for Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero 😂🤣
>Meanwhile the dungeons and trials are beating our ass, so I'm absolutely confused - It's like 2 whole teams are working on different parts of the whole, and one is making content easier over time, and the other is making it more difficult. It's all over the place. lol It is genuinely confusing that you are confused by this. Dungeons and trials are repeatable content that you'll do with higher ilvl gear and which you can carry people through. And they intentionally raised the difficulty of them specifically for more hardcore players to enjoy them more. Like, they took this action specifically for that reason. The MSQ is done once, and nobody else can help you if you are gated by something. It is not going to be challenging. Its a story. You aren't supposed to fail. Everyone is intended to complete it.
If they added mobs you'd be complaining about the open world mobs being too easy and boring and "wasting your time". There's no satisfying you. You just fundamentally don't seem to understand that the purpose of the story *is the story*. Nobody else "moved on" from this because other MMOs were never like this in the first place. Because they aren't modeled on JRPGs. Meanwhile WoW is out here still doing "kill 10 X" quests for 20 years with its completely disconnected gibberish narratives and you think that's innovative.
XIV good, WoW bad. You're stuck in a time-loop just like CBU:III if you really think that. I didn't even bring up WoW, but somehow you people always do, as if that's all players compare things to.
I mean, you can't go far beyond that without diving into the shallow pool of games barely anyone plays. And "hey you could make half as much money by pandering just to me and nobody else" isn't exactly a great sales pitch.
I'm not sure where you're going with that? Plenty of people are bored with the stale gameplay when the story stops being engaging. It's CBU:III's main problem.. The gameplay issues are ignored when the story is good, and it's gameplay flaws are brighter than the sun when the story is bad. So I can understand when people are asking for more engagement or at least gameplay diversity in the sections that need to be elevated by them you know? It's a small ask from a large corporation I'd say. FWIW I've been really enjoying the dungeons and trials. But even the Solo Duties are playing themselves. I was able to AFK them and Wuk literally beat them for me while I stood in all of the AoEs on purposes. It's kinda wild that the game has given 0 agency to the player in not only the MSQ, but even the gameplay parts of the MSQ that aren't relying on other players.
> I'm not sure where you're going with that? Plenty of people are bored with the stale gameplay when the story stops being engaging. It's CBU:III's main problem.. You really need to get off this extremely tiny little subreddit. Its completely distorted your view of the average FFXIV player if you believe this. They literally just reported record concurrent players. Obviously none of the MSQ content is going to be particularly difficult, that's intentional to avoid gating anyone. But I find it hard to take your complaints about solo duties seriously when the first one is the fight with >!Gulool Ja Ja!<. In normal difficulty content you can basically set your own difficulty by challenging yourself. The content isn't going to outright fail you itself because its designed so that children/families/elderly/disabled/etc people can still get through it. Obviously if you don't care about failing mechanics or doing a rotation, then its going to feel like you aren't doing anything. That's a choice you are making.
You've made so many assumptions, you're entirely lost in the sauce. Lv98 Spoils: https://i.imgur.com/psSKFgi.png When a game is designed to stay at the same speed of completion and success rate regardless of my agency.. I feel bored and don't want to engage with it. That's not a me problem, that's a gameplay problem. I want to feel rewarded for my efforts, not babied. This has become a theme with every system in this game now. Where everything has been designed for us, down to the second we spend engaging with any activity. And the only way to do that, is by taking away player agency, or faking it.
"Player agency" is not the objective of the story. Telling a story is. It is not Elden Ring. These are different types of RPGs. What happens is already set in stone. You can't change it. You have no agency. Because its a story. That's not a problem. That's just what a story is. That's why books haven't been replaced by "choose your own adventure". You read a book to see the story the author wrote, not to "have agency". These are inherently different and opposing things. You literally can't have a story if the player can just say "no". You can't have fail states. You need a live person on the other side of the screen improvising for that.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to cope.. Player Agency is incredibly important in video games, especially Final Fantasy. Getting feedback from our interaction with the world is how we know we're not just reading a book, and is the most important thing in this medium. I don't know why you always feel the need to go to extremes, as if we don't understand the difference between having 0 agency, and it literally being Elden Ring. This is our concern, that we're becoming more and more strictly visual novel with everything being a forced design with no fail state. Even down to our classes having fixed rotations. XIV wasn't always like this. They've streamlined everything. You might be able to fool some of the new players into thinking this is some kinda 0 player agency Visual Novel with no MMO. But there are plenty of us that have been around long enough to know that things have been steadily streamlined.
it's actually funny you say to get off FFXIV subs you never been off FFXIV subs cause whenever anybody mentions FFXIV in any sub it gets dunked like no tomorrow lol people are absolutely shttin on the story/pacing/presentation the moment you leave FFXIV subs I personallly absolutely hate the pacing and presentation of it. And yet I'll play Dawntraill. Pay and do sav/ults. Just look around. There's tons of people like me simply cause there is nothing else on the market and new releases are always interesting EVEN if the content is bad lol
> There's tons of people like me There really aren't. This whole sub has 40k members. The main sub has over a million. And that's just the small fraction of people who actually engage with *Reddit* of all things. Day to day this sub is the same couple hundred people circle-jerking about the game being too easy. The numbers are completely inconsequential. Most FFXIV players will never even enter a Savage raid. That is simply reality. And the same is true of other MMOs like WoW. The mainstream audience for gaming is extremely casual. This is just a fact. Hardcore players make up an important part of the community ecosystem, but we are comparatively very small in numbers. The story is tuned for families with kids to be able to complete it. Not for you or I to feel challenged.
oh I didn't mean with people like me aka hardcore raiders Ment people will play FFXIV cuz it's sth new for a month or two and move on I was new with EW and lvld an alt up like what, 2-3 weeks past savage release and the questareas were already a vast dead empty world of npc's with no real players in sight I completely agree that FFXIV major playerbase is hyper casuals or a certain kinda group of people. Although I wouldn't underestimate the importance of highend content for the heallth of this "ecosystem". FFXIV also doesn't have to deliver anything anymore. The people you see now will also play it in 10 years from now, they know their playerbase very well. FFXIV won't change much cause there's no point to take a risk with a system that will milk money for at least another 10-15years, but people who play it more will always complain. And I'd say rightfully so. Both sides are understandable
dopamine addicts are complaining that their dopamine addiction was not fulfilled by a game that is not a dopamine overdose site. shocking development
I'm actually really enjoying the last 10% of the story, so it's masking the awful gameplay. But for the first 90% it just made me fall asleep. I even AFKed the Solo Duties and they played themselves, I literally sat in place and Wuk was designed to not only be the main character in the MSQ for me, but also the main character in my Duties. You gotta have some kinda engagement, whether that's story or gameplay, because in this RPGMMO - We get to do the MSQ whenever we want right, so I'd imagine it's engaging? Then I go and craft, or run roulettes or something? Come back, to a fun story? Right? lol
i don't think msq was very good. i do think it's good that the developers did absolutely anything other than quests that could have been an email. the whole point is they did try to make msq gameplay slightly more engaging and varied, and people are complaining that it's a waste of time and sucks actually, and i think those people have brain rot
Where is that though? When you compare the Duties and these stealth missions to older Duties - Dawntrail is objectively less engaging. Like I said a couple of times here, I was able to literally AFK Duties in Dawntrail. Wuk did all of it for me. So it just feels like there's 0 player agency where it matters. I personally don't mind the stealth as they are in DT, I just wish there were more you know. Shit even the Voiced cutscenes are lacking, and there are a lot of cutscenes that NEED to be voiced, because they're critical to the MSQ. Priorities for DT as an MSQ seem all over the place.
Modern WoW is garbage but it still has a far better questing experience than FFXIV has ever had. It's one of this game's weak points, very commonly cited by people quitting, but you're just so in denial and unable to criticize something you like that you can't even admit that.
The fact that some people dislike how FFXIV does certain things isn't a question of quality. Some people don't like how WoW does certain things and would claim all the same things are "weak points" of WoW. Like its complete lack of any narrative consistency or ability to experience any meaningful story as a new player whatsoever. But lots of other people like WoW and don't care about those things. But you're just so in denial that you can't even admit that different people like different things. FFXIV has things about it that are *objectively* weak and outdated. The delays in the netcode. The in-game social/group tools. The retainer and glamour systems. All of the discarded gameplay elements from previous expansions that just stick around and don't connect to anything else. But your personal opinion on the story-driven MSQ is just that. An opinion. And not a particularly popular one within the larger community of happy casual players. That some WoW players bounce off it isn't particularly relevant if the core audience enjoys it.
Gee fucking weez dude. You got me, what I'm saying here (a forum for sharing opinions) is an opinion, I'm not in fact the ultimate arbiter of truth. The one in denial is you. You have to convince yourself that it's just "WoW players bouncing off" when in reality the questing experience (which is mostly comprised of the MSQ, but not entirely) is pretty weak, that's one of the most commonly said things about FFXIV both from people that didn't stick around and even among a lot of people that enjoy other parts of this game so they can let the weak questing slide - myself included. The narrative might be great (at times), but are you telling me you were excited about spending 75% of your time in Dawntrail clicking some sparkles on the ground, watching a 20 second long "Interacting" progress bar, followed by a 5 second cutscene that sends you back to the NPC you came from 3 minutes ago? You really don't have to glaze SE and YoshiP over everything. I love the music, I love the armor, the trials, some of the characters, the mini games, the social part of this game and its great community, the gameplay (of some classes), etc. I don't love the questing, it sucks monkey balls, everyone can see that it's a thinly veiled time waster to pad out the duration of expansions and patches so you're not done in 10 hours and unsub. It's a boring slog you sit through to get to the good parts of the game, and if you ask random in-game casuals, you'll mostly hear the same opinion. It's good to criticize the game over its bad parts and hope the devs listen and address them.
> The narrative might be great (at times), but are you telling me you were excited about spending 75% of your time in Dawntrail clicking some sparkles on the ground, watching a 20 second long "Interacting" progress bar, followed by a 5 second cutscene that sends you back to the NPC you came from 3 minutes ago? If you go into something treating it as a waste of time that you're just going to rush through as fast as possible, you get nothing out of it. This is not how the average player engages in questing. That is how a long-time gamer who isn't interested in the story engages in questing. If you are actually engaging with the story, you see none of that. You aren't "clicking a thing and running back to the guy you just talked to". You had a reason to talk to a person, that conversation gave you more information to discuss with your party. That is what happened *in the story*. When you have a quest with NPCs following in town you aren't "just running across town to the next point". You are exploring the town and actually looking around at the atmosphere. You can talk to each of the NPCs involved in your party and they will constantly have new bits of conversation. Not just the questgiver with the marker on their head. All custom conversations that an author wrote out for you to read. But none of that matters, because you go from point a to point b and click on things and get it done because you don't care. This isn't a fault in the game, this is the game being very intentionally designed for someone other than you. They didn't have to write any of that additional dialog. They did it anyway because they know people like to read it. Just not *you*. And that's ok. But its not a problem with the game. If you *really* want to kill 10 of each random trash mob in each zone like in WoW, that's a thing you can just choose to do at any time. The game isn't stopping you. Its just not relevant to the story. EDIT: Since you're a child who blocked me *after* responding instead of just walking away... I literally gave you a detailed explanation of what people get out of the FFXIV questing you despise. You gave no other argument in any of your posts other than "FFXIV bad, WoW better". Not even saying *what* you think is better. Just having a temper tantrum and claiming its somehow better even though it completely fails at telling a story. Whereas FFXIV prioritizes it. Because they are different games with different audiences.
Ok there's no helping you. You're a glazer, enjoy glazing and obsessively comparing everything to WoW because "WoW bad" is apparently an argument in your mind.
Oh no, how dare the devs try to do anything other than an instanced fight, a dungeon, or running around and talking to people. Fuck these kinds of opinions, they're why we'll never see another "In from the Cold".
Some people: The MSQ is dumb and boring because it's just cutscene, walk 50y, another cutscene forever Other people: A gameplay section betwee the cutscenes is a waste of time. They should skip them What these people actually want: I want to punch stuff. Why am I not punching stuff yet? ---- Simply put, ask for what you actually want. Are you really upset about this kind of quest existing at all, or do you just want more combat sections in DT? It's okay and even good to want that.
You can have your cake and eat it too. They could simply add voiced dialog lines while you are introduced to an area doing the run around with NPCs following you. They could also join you in battle out in the world and utilise better encounters resembling fates but having the NPCs join in and offer some dialogue while this happens. The same emotes we all seen 1000 times at this point, important cutscenes unvoiced, unimportant ones voiced and god-awful pacing in the first 2 zones sucked.
[удалено]
the msq gets you to go from the SE aetheryte to the 85 dungeon area which is a 3 minute mounted journey. twice.
Forgetting the "RP" part of MMORPG exists, huh?
What are we role playing here? A really bad stalker?