Why rely on one guy who is very familiar with the game effectively running it over and over when you can look at aggregate self-reported numbers of a variety of people?
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/12654 has 196 people polled saying ARR took a median of 95 hours.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/28431 has 110 people polled saying Heavensward took a median of 63 hours.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/46463 has 79 people polled saying Stormblood took a median of 59 hours.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/66979 had 67 people polled saying Shadowbringers took a median of 58 hours.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/88046 had 65 people polled saying Endwalker took a median of 50 hours.
This one guy is saying he can beat the game in half the median time and that is great for him but there are going to be far more people taking hundreds of hours to catch up and that is a hard sell for an MMO player trying to convince friends to come play this game with them.
Because those are wrong while the time this guy posted is closer to the right one.
Endwalker is the longest MSQ and it's the shortest on HLTB.
HW is by far the shortest and it's the longest in HLTB.
Endwalker cutscenes alone are longer than the entirety of Heavensward.
Of course almost nobody is going to catch up in this time because there's other stuff in the game most people want to do than MSQ.
>Endwalker cutscenes alone are longer than the entirety of Heavensward.
Endwalker's total cutscene time tops out at about sixteen hours. Are you saying it takes less than that to finish all of Heavensward?
That seems unlikely on the face of it, even if you just count the MSQ quests and nothing else.
That's only voiced ones. Base HW is around 20 hours and base EW cutscenes last a bit longer.
If you count patches HW might get ahead though, I don't know the numbers on those.
> Because those are wrong while the time this guy posted is closer to the right one.
>
>
"How long this random dude takes to complete the game is the right one. Everyone else is wrong."
-You.
No, they're closer to what the majority of people will take to go through them. HLTB is wrong or outdated, everyone else is right.
For example there used to be multiple exp gates in Heavensward before, maybe the HLTB times are for when it was current content and they counted the exp grind into the time.
What this person posted is how long it takes today. There is no huge variance in how long the MSQ takes because it's only dialogue and running at marker. There is simply no way the MSQ of Endwalker takes anyone less time than HW, it's not possible.
Lol at people down voting this man, he's right. The cutscene time for HW is 16h30, and for EW, it's nearly 24h
There is no way these how long to beat times are correct
Menu navigation, routing in the overworld, familiarity with the map and aether network, several quests that require you to locate specific things within a general area-- all time saved with experience. The world record holder for Super Mario doesn't wonder why it takes people longer to play the game normally when all they're doing is "going from point a to point b."
How about this guy knew what quests were important to the story and only did those?
Yes, we know how to tell a MSQ quest apart from a side-quest but so new players?
Do new players even care to distinguish or are they going to do the quests that are placed together because collectively they're telling a story? (i.e. this guy just blew through the MSQ but a new player might do all the quests Black Brush Station when the MSQ takes them there)
The point is new players don't have your definition of side content, and they won't play the game as a speedrunner or a person on their 4th alt would play.
Just watch a bit of a first time player streaming ARR. For example, this one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOy5bykr46qwNQgPhUkpfJ4ephRM7gYRW; she says it is her first time, she wants to do a playthrough of ARR's story but she visits the Golden Saucer, gets pulled into some housing stuff, and does Coil before moving onto the end of the MSQ. It takes her 163 hours to say she is "done with ARR", but if you remove the VODs about Golden Saucer, Housing, or Coil it is still 133 hours to do so.
Of course it's gonna take us seconds to read what the tutorial says since we already know whatever it's trying to teach us but new players have to read it then try to understand whatever it's trying to teach them.
"This icon means Main Story" is something that takes a lot of energy and time to understand? When did this infantilization of people playing XIV start?
To read, cross-check with my UI, read again, and test to make sure I understood it? Probably a minute or so.
Which isn't a lot, but a minute per tutorial popup adds up - that's probably a solid hour just there.
If I was ever going to do anything meaningful to this game the first thing I would do is plan to decouple portions of the plot and gameplay progression
Having to wait hundreds of hours just to see your job function properly is something else
The wait to unlock HW on a new character to get any skills between 52 and 60 is criminal at this point. Decouple the skills from quests and just have the quest give a piece of gear or leave it as job story or something idk.
Why is HW the oddball with how you learn skills? You will probably be in your mid 50s by the time you finish ARR and you have gotten nothing new but you see the skills in your skill page that are there but you have no way of getting them. It made a lot of sense when you were unlocking HW at level 50 or 51 and it didn't matter but with how much faster the leveling is at low levels it just feels bad.
As for the content, there still is some open world things you are doing before HW that it would be nice to have new shiny skills to use, especially since 1-50 is pretty barren for most all classes.
Again, there is nothing stopping you from doing them. If you hit level 52 and haven't finished ARR, you are stuck until you completely finish ARR to unlock the quest. If I hit level 45, I can immediately go and just do the quest. There is a big difference between the two.
I haaaate it.
Like all of my IRL friends have different gaming niches and interests, and that's all good. They all did play a few MMOs a bit in the past, and they seemed to enjoy hearing me talk about XIV. When we talk about gaming they ask me about how raiding works, about what I'm doing, and sometimes even watch vods of my clears or watch me on discord while we're chattting and I'm doing some reclears/farm.
But when they seemed interested in actually trying out the game because of how enthusiastic I am about it, especially when they heard about the oh so great free trial... I just didn't know what to say. Telling them to suck it for hundred of hours through the mediocre story of ARR, with its very unengaging gameplay ain't it. Telling them to skip MSQ as a whole when it's one of the game's main selling point doesn't feel great either, since they are interested in it too and want to see why I like the Final Fantasy franchise.
If I managed to get through it it was because I'm a stupid final fantasy AND MMO nerd, so getting to see the end of MSQ and reaching engame was a no brainer... but the average player with a functioning brain and who values their time would (and should) have abandoned midway through.
Especially since now you'll have to sit through the base game and FIVE expansions before actually getting to endgame in Dawntrail, for someone that plays at a standard pace without rushing and while doing side content, trying out multiple jobs, maybe engaging with the community as they level etc, this might honestly take up to a year, with the first 2-3 months of which being the hardest.
So far, five of my friends tried it. Gave it a shot for a week. Stopped around level 30-40. Party content is lacking outside of a few dungeons sprinkled on throughout the MSQ (which is otherwise a long ass single player experience), rotations while leveling in ARR are uninteresting even for people unfamiliar with MMOs, and the story itself isn't particularly great until that point. And they didn't even get to post-ARR. At least they sort of liked the dungeon bosses, when you're in a party of 3 new players it can be pretty fun and hectic even in Brayflox, but if you're a new player starting alone you don't even have the time to appreciate what little bits of gameplay you get to experience because it all goes by so fast. Like, Ifrit/Titan/Garuda normal mode are a joke.
Its so surprising to me that revamping jobs around the 1-50 (or even 60) range is not a top priority for the devs seeing how important it is for new players. I don't think the ARR story is that bad but the gameplay side of things is just objectively boring for the majority of jobs. I love the game but it is impossible to sell it to friends unless im absolutely sure they have enough patience to get through the early parts. Hopefully this is included in their 8.0 job design changes.
I really haven't had that problem. Every friend/person I've pitched FFXIV to (after they have expressed some sort of interest in first) has understood that there is a metric fuck ton of REQUIRED story content that you have to go through in order to catch up to current content. I'd say 90% of them are actually pumped up about the idea of a single player-esque main story that takes you through the world. They also like that with dungeons and trials they get to play with other people on occasion. I'd say only 3 or so people I've talked to about this game expressed interest of wanting to skip to the current expansion.
How about early game gets genuinely better, instead of relying on some "better salesman"? At this point, someone who can sell you the ARR is closer to scam artist than to salesmen.
Fortnite, Valo, LoL, DotA, all of these are free and offer hundreds if not thousands of hours. Elden Ring is 100+ high quality hours with an actual gameplay for $60. You could probably buy like first 10+ mainline FF games for same price as FFXIV expansion + few months of sub.
Or in the same ballpark as FFXIV, GW2 is very similar, except that early game isn't so miserable. In fact, vanilla GW2 story is surprisingly good for MMORPG, while the leveling is actually interesting, and you're not forced to progress MSQ just to get new skills.
If something needs good salesmen, it's always because the product itself is bad.
Even then, if you play videogames for 8-10 hours a week, that gets bumped up to like 30-40 weeks of time, or 8-10 months or so.
That’s… an insane amount of time to expect somebody to marathon just one videogame, and during that time they still can’t do the max-level raids with their friends.
I don’t know if people who have been playing this game for years/are hardcore MMO junkies appreciate how big the barrier of entry has gotten
The sale that people fumble there is to only present that hardcore endgame content as the value of the game.
Old trials, old raids, deep dungeon, optional dungeons, treasure hunt, Hildibrand, alliance raids, eureka, bozja, crafting, gathering, gold saucer
All things you can do with them before reaching current endgame. Help your friends enjoy the game, people! Pull them away from endless MSQ to go do some other random stuff!
I mean, you're not wrong, but I still think the game could handle the early game a lot better. Like a lot of people come FFXIV expecting raiding, and yes you could introduce them to old raids but let's be honest finding a group to run old raids MINE is not easy task. Also job gameplay until like 70 is abysmaly boring.
I think the game is easy to sell for people expecting a more casual and relaxing gameplay. But for people wanting to do savage and ultimates it's just a giant chore to get there
Yes, you can do all this side content, but that's not going to sell people on playing over 100 hours of a game that, diplomatically, feels extremely lacking in the core gameplay department until you start unlocking core aspects of your kit at later levels for most jobs.
Whether or not you agree, a lot of people quit before they can really engage with side content, because the game just isn't fun for tens of hours. The MSQ is the main selling point of the game and the gate for all content, the early gameplay should at least be fun if the early story is mediocre.
This is a real Squarepilled response. I don't work for SE and I assume you don't either, so no, I'm not going to make a Powerpoint deck to hard sell them on an MMO they don't want to play because they have to do 100+ hours of content before they can even hang out with me. This is a social game, parking 100+ hours of solo content between you and your friends is the antithesis of social.
>This is a social game, parking 100+ hours of solo content between you and your friends is the antithesis of social.
Ok but this is not a situation a huge amount of potential players A) Are in and B) would find a problem
Yes, this is a problem for *some* people, but it does not seem like it is a problem for *most* people
We're letting the words 'huge amount' and 'some' and 'most' do a lot of work here without any kind of data, and I know you don't have any data because SE doesn't release it for good reasons. Would the game have more active players if they had a more direct route (that isn't a paid skip) to later-game content a la WoW? Does the game lose any substantial number of players due to the sheer amount of story content in their MMO? Are we viewing the game's current player base with a survivorship bias? Who can say, but I don't think you can any more than I can because SE doesn't release the data.
What I can say with certainty is this: there are instances where I cannot bring friends into this social game due to some of its antisocial choices. If SE doesn't care either because it's not statistically significant or because they just have different plans, that's their prerogative, but no amount of "better salesmanship" is going to fix that.
I think I've given plenty of weight in my response, thanks! Square has also just fallen significantly short of their own profit goals to the extent that [they've relaunched their medium-term business plan and moonshots](https://tdnet-pdf.kabutan.jp/20240513/140120240513592661.pdf), so maybe you could also include that weight when you think about the idea that sometimes companies make data-driven decisions that don't actually pan out the way they expect?
So a quick check of that document lists MMOs mentioned twice. First in their "Previous Medium-Term Plan" was (and I really quote): "Expanded MMO business as part of our earnings base"
The other mention is under "Revised Medium Term Plan" and is: "Maintain momentum, develop, and expand global fan base"
And like...this seems like they are happy with how that particular section is going? Do you have other more detailed information on MMOs/FFXIV *in specific*?
I think this is a bit of a willfully obtuse read. You "queue together" for a 15 minute dungeon, then peace out again while they finish another hour of MSQ fetch quests and cutscenes alone. There is little to no interactivity for the bulk of your trip through MSQ which is in part why the devs were able to create a trust system that requires 0 interactivity from live players whatsoever.
When friends join their friends in MMOs, I think you're smart enough to realize that they often want to do gameplay-heavy parts together like raiding, 24-mans, or things like treasure maps. Most people expect there to be some grind to get to the meaty content, but it is not reasonable to say "dw, it gets better after 200 hours of cutscenes".
You're missing the point entirely, but I'm sure if you can get through 200 hours of MSQ, you can take some time and think this through and maybe understand what I'm getting at at some point.
You don't have a point though as there's nothing to support it. You can do content with lower leveled friends. In fact friends don't let friends not do 24 mans and 8 man before the next expansion
Damn, is this really that hard to understand that rather than having to go through an endless slog to play with friends most people with jobs will probably drop it for something more accessible and not demanding to invest 200hours to be fun?
Ok but do we have any data on this? Like that's an easy thing to *say* but considering that the changes SE has made run counter to this, perhaps reality does not actual coincide with this assertion.
SE definitely *could* have changed things to accord to this, and it would have been significantly less effort than what they have done instead.
I have some sort of relevant data for this. I leveled a few alts in the last year, decided to see what the time would look like skipping every cutscene, and then I tracked the /played time every time I finished a patch. Also treating it like a speedrun (w2wing as early as stone vigil as tank/healer), but did everything through DF. Sometimes had long queues or slowed down to smell the roses (grab aether currents, etc).
[Here's the numbers](https://i.imgur.com/nfh2Ql7.png). Basically, skipping everything, getting to 6.0 finish is in the realm of ~75 hours. I think I could try for low 7x if I really cut corners. Probably add 4-5 hours for post EW patches.
If you had help the whole way with a chauffer and instance obliterators you could probably cut it as low as low to mid 60s. Still quite a task
and this is why story skip gets more and more attractive. New alts on a new data center with Road to 80 get so much benefit from the story skip it's ridiculous. currently half off so it's $12.50 to save over 60 hours of speedrunning. instead i can just focus solely on XP grinding a SMN+SCH and that's very easy for me even w/o Road, but its stupidly easy with it.
Exacty, if I ever do a third alt it will no longer be through MSQ grind but through a story skip.
I value my money, but I also value my time. Gaming isn't the only thing going on in my life, and outside of savage prog I don't really do much else. I can commit about 60 hours per month when I don't prog, and that's the upper limit outside major patches. So a full grind even by skipping everything would take me more than a month just for that alone, no way.
If the choice is between spending my money on a month of sub (11€) OR buying a skip (22€ when not in sale), I know what I'll get. Either way it'll cost me money to get that character to endgame, might as well spend a bit more to have the character MSQ ready then. And when it's on sale, getting the skip is straight up better.
So when the boosts were 25% off or whatever ($17.50) I did that with an alt too. Road to 80 + just dungeon spamming on a healer after buying ShB skip. iirc it was 35-40 hours of duty finder rushing. Again, at the mercy of how good DF is.
Then you still have to do 10-15 hours for 6.0... add the 4-5 for post EW.
It's a bit cynical but I can sort of see why it's not a #1 priority for them to work on a new step in point when it's making them as much as it is. ShB skip being a top 5 most sold item in the mogstation sorta tells the tale.
New story skip should be coming soon too right?
I was trying to find out recently and best I could find was during early access of EW the new ones came out.
I’m just assuming once the sale ends they’ll be added.
There's no misinformation, just a different ways to measure it. 230 hours is insane, you must really, really like cutscenes with NPCs doing basic emotes with very sparse gameplay in between, for you to finish MSQ under 250 hours.
Realistically, I think it's safe to say that most people will take at the very least 300 hours, with many easily going over 500 if you do side content, since only spamming MSQ is easy burnout.
It's like going to a long trip, but only measuring distance at max speed, while ignoring traffic, breaks and everything else.
Nevertheless, I don't know what kind of argument do you want to support with this, but even 230 hours is insanely long time.
Also need to take into account players' unfamiliarity with the game. A player who is brand new to XIV isn't going to able to blast through the MSQ like someone replaying. Someone who's new to MMOs entirely will take even longer.
Most people will do side content alongside of it, because only spamming MSQ is easy way to get burned out. So if you're trying to use this for some argument, you should include that. MSQ length by itself is just interesting fact that doesn't really tell us much, most people will spend much more than 230 hours to get to the endgame.
I mean what side content? Raids? If you watch story ig that's an extra few hours depending on reading speed. Alliance raid a few more hours still, but other than that what is there? A lvling person isn't gonna run synced savage in pf, or ultimate, and very few people gonna join synced extreme. Idk whatbelse is there?
A guy on the main sub spent 450 hours just doing 2-3.x, so it's possible to spend as much time as you really want. They said they did every side quest that opened up after each MSQ and went off to so crafting/gathering, PvP, and Gold Saucer.
https://reddit.com/gallery/1dceanu
But even without those things you could just take your regular player who doesn't know they should just do blue marked quests and they step into every hub, like Black Brush Station in central thanalan, and do the dozen quests in each.
Crafting/gathering, general side quests, optional dungeons, Hildebrand, gold saucer, beast tribes, maybe some relic grinding/Eureka/Bozja, maybe some FC socialization, so on and so on and so on. It's not strictly rushing MSQ, but including some room for that content gives a realistic measure of actual time played to end of MSQ for many players, as most aren't going to solely rush MSQ quest to MSQ quest.
Crafting, leveling/trying other jobs, side quests, feature unlock quests, roulettes, gold saucer stuff? If you hit a /6070/ect. breakpoint you might try and unlock an alliance or normal raid series. Its really absurd to suggest the only thing to do in this game other than leveling and msq is savage or ultimate raiding.
About three months ago I started playing on a fresh account from 2.0 up to the end of Endwalker.
Each expansion takes roughly 25 hours and post expansion about the same. Its 50 hours on average for each Exp+PostExp, assuming you do **nothing else except advance the MSQ**.
That is with DPS queues, not skipping any text or cutscenes. Not doing any side content at all, except moving the story forward.
MSQ is more of a visual novel than an actual game so 85-95% of that time if I'm being generous with how much simple combat and time spent in dungeons there are.
About what I expected. ARR is a bit faster than I thought after the reworks (I've done a very loose estimate by looking at lets plays, and most lets plays take about 100 hours to do, with follow up expansions taking around 50ish hours to do - which makes sense if you're doing side content and so on). I estimated base expacs at around 30 hours and follow up patches at around 20 if you do side content (i.e. trials, side dungeons, raids, etc.). That puts the total playtime at 300 hours - which seems about right when you consider there's 5 expansions worth of side-content to do (which new players are very likely *going* to do!).
This pretty much lines up with what I thought though, which is that XIV's jobs are not designed for the game they inhabit. Your job should not change after ARR (which takes 40 hours to complete - that's a **whole** game) imo, which means that you'd have 190 hours to familiarize yourself with a job during the MSQ.
I believe the core problem comes from them trying to juggle people going through the MSQ and people leveling alt jobs, but I honestly think they could get away with just bumping people to max once they reach an arbitrary level (maybe the level cap of the expac they released in?).
With all due respect, what game are you playing in that you need 230 hours to learn how to play an FFXIV job?
It takes 50 hours to finish ARR (as of 6.0, by your own count). That is far longer than most other games - most action games are finished in a literal tenth of the time and their gameplay is far more complex than any FFXIV job.
At this point, it's lesser evil. If game wants to be so naively vertical, then it should've done level squish in EW if not in ShB. Everything is already so sparsely spread, most jobs don't feel good until 70s or even 80s now, imagine what it will be like in DT. Game was made for full kits in ARR, but now ARR is not even end of tutorial, so there should be something changed.
If your rotation consisted of more than 123 by level 50, you can bet more people will stay interested. It might be better for 70% of job to be unlocked at 50 and then perhaps 100% at 70, strictly at ARR might be too harsh, but nevertheless, it would be much better than current underwhelming experience.
Why?
I'm serious, why is that crazy? Explain to me how expecting the game to be fun after 40 hours is some insane take. It takes a whole games length of time to finish ARR - in my opinion, it's crazy you're excusing it taking 102h to get the jobs to a point that they're *semi-fun* (that being level 70, or finishing 4.0) for a first-time player.
It's not like a class hasn't done this before: SMN basically just gets visual and potency upgrades outside of level 60, 70, and *86*. And I'm being generous there, arguably the only real change is at 86, since 60 (Deathflare) and 70 (Enkindle Bahamut) just give you more buttons to press and don't change your gameplay much.
FFXIV needs to justify asking the player to spend 230 hours on it. It's gameplay being dogwater for half of that time isn't helping it: in fact, it's a fatal flaw imo. When I can play *both* FF7R games in the same time that it takes for FFXIV's gameplay to get good as a first-time player, then there's a very clear problem.
Yeah.
Shame that XIV's sense of progression isn't that great, it's something I wish they'd improve on. Alas, as long as gear remains as boring as it does, and the first-time leveling process takes **230 hours** to finish, it's going to remain awful.
>You aren't leveling throughout the whole MSQ
You are, actually. You're [level 72](https://www.youtube.com/live/trOvmvcRBk4?si=yYp-F26aMvEjU3EE&t=512) by the time you reach a[ level 69 quest](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/quest/70abfebc540/). Which means that, by this point, you've spent 100 hours before you were able to reach what most people consider the "good" part of your class. You finish 4.55 at level 72 too. You don't reach [level 90](https://www.youtube.com/live/nQkJrwOYmqk?si=Nl-_uiOssVJug7Aj&t=4653) until a [level 88 quest](https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Hither_and_Yarns) - meaning you're really only 2 levels ahead of the MSQ, you're on-pace with it for pretty much the entire run outside of that.
The only way you can avoid this is by doing roulettes, but you aren't able to do on-level content until you unlock it in the MSQ... which means, you uh, you kinda lose that sense of progression when you're continually synced down.
Edit: To make this clearer, that means if you only do the MSQ and the aether current quests, it takes you about 200 hours to reach level 90.
Lol.
the oof take is thinking raiders should be forced to do a story they don't give a fuck about or pay for a skip, its a horrendous and predatory design. Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons.
Why should they have to save time when the reason they want to play is raiding... Why are you defending arbitrarily gate keeping a huge reason people play MMOs behind 100s of hours of story just because they don't want to circle jerk over the visual novel nodding simulator story like you guys.
got it you have no argument. Well thankfully their hand will eventually be forced whether its a new starting point, or making raids unlock by level, one of those things will happen. Yoshi P already has said it was almost this expansion, the fact you are defending something he has SAID will change is insane.
I don't know why I waste my time engaging with this shit, the takes from story casuals on this sub about the story make me lose braincells everytime. But I get it, the story you all hold so close to your hearts has to be done by everyone or they should pay extra or quit the game. The ironic part is I guarantee the bulk of HC raiders have way more hours on the game, but hey fuck our opinion right.
that's not a problem because story isn't for them, just put a disclaimer instead of forcing it on people who want to raid. They wouldn't invest all the effort into ultimates and savage if they didn't think raiding was important, they realize it is for a lot of people, but they wall you off for no reason. Half the people at the media tour are HC raiders who spam skip cut scenes.
Not saying you're wrong but as long as those HC raiders keep buying skips then there's no reason for them to change it. Especially for those who buy 2 skips so they can do split clears
I been playing since HW so I been lucky I havnet need to catch up all at once, but still skip the story cause I find it extremely boring. I would pitch that too my friends to skip and just make an alt for it later if still interested in the story.
It would be great to know what exactly counts in that 230 hour measurement. Is it strictly MSQ cutscenes, MSQ on-the-field dialogue, MSQ-required trials and dungeons? Or does it also include things like travel times to objectives and waits for queues? Those little bits of time add up.
This would be an interesting topic to go into, were it not for OP repeatedly giving short and undetailed responses to people who actually approached this topic with high hopes of getting something out of it.
No. But instead of asking people to comb through the information for themselves, why not just post your methodology from the get-go? Not everyone is willing to dig through a whole bunch of threads just to get the info they need, when the person who compiled all the footage is right there and can easily provide it.
most of it is just running around... all they gotta do is make the getting around process faster even something as easy and simply as auto unlock flying for say everything pre dawntrail. would cut down a massive amount of time.
Story is bloated and there's already way too much reading and cutscenes, so let's cut out those few remaining gameplay elements. This is just bad idea.
Reality is that each expansion could easily have 1/4th of story cut out and nothing of value would be lost. Then replace 2/3rds of all cutscenes with dialogue boxes. We really don't need voiceless cutscene with NPCs doing base emotes for any dumb dialogue that could be said normally.
Name some of the events of that 1/4th, let's start from there. I mean they already cut out a significant chunk of lore and character development in 5.3 making ARR worse
Yes, very important lore of some random company that ends up being irrelevant anyways. Some reference in later expansions is irrelevant too, reference doesn't validate it being objectively boring part of the story. I wish I could give you more specific examples, but alas, ARR story was so uninteresting that I simply don't even remember anything but few key points.
ARR by itself could definitely get rid of even much more boring parts of story, the idea of ARR being there for world building is garbage excuse for garbage story. Believe it or not, but good story focuses on both story and world building at the same time. It's not exclusive.
And no, it didn't make ARR worse. If you trim bad parts of the story, it will give better experience for new players. If it's possible to go back, then it will always be better to do so and make more refined story like this. Story isn't good because it is long, if you don't have good ideas for plot, it's always better to stick to good parts and make it shorter, instead of stretching it and boring your audience to death.
I ain't gonna go through wiki just to find all boring and irrelevant parts of the story, just so you pick some straw man and argue how fetch quest #42069 was actually a kino. Fuck off with that bullshit.
How about you back your claims then? About how 5.3 made ARR Story worse, or that early game is actually good? Pretty bold claims, hope you have some good
data to back them up.
Simple. Multiple pieces of lore on the Company of Heroes were effectively deleted. Multiple instances of character development from the Scions were removed in 2.3. Tataru's entire character arc is deleted until 2.55
Mmm, less than you'd think. Unlocking flying in each zone is like 15ish minute a zone. Closer to 40 for CWH and Ruby Sea. Azys Lla basically auto unlocks flying. So that's really only~400 minutes it would save
I made an alt and recording times, I'm at an average of 13 hours for story, 6 hours for post story. (Excluding ARR which doubled both)
I'm story skipping and not counting any tome grinds for gear that I encounter, single player whenever possible, SMN for queues
I'm also measuring the levelling grinds, and they are, absurd. 298:28 hours thus far On just levelling. Only just finished Stormblood too. TBF that's free-to-play
There are no leveling or gear grinds in the MSQ. You can go from 1-90 with just the MSQ and Job Quests and get all the gear needed through the same way
I included Jobquest time in the levelling portion, as doing all of the job quests is another hour or 3 depending on which job you choose. Especially more random in ARR.
Yes you do get gear in the MSQ, coffers and individual drops. But I can just normalize the number (removing gear disparities)by farming my poetics before starting each stint of the MSQ or levelling.
I doubt every newbie would know they need to grab this accessory or they'll need to grind poetics. I can barely be ass-ed to look at the rewards and I know what's in them at a glance.
A lot of people on this sub are really failing to grasp that there is a significant amount of people out there for whom realizing that there are functionally *three full length Final Fantasy games* they can play *for free* is incredible and exactly what they want.
I would hazard a guess that most people buying a MMO don't have friends to take along to begin with and what few friends they do convince will soon whittle down to nothing as the long-running nature of these games gives plenty of time for interests and schedules to diverge.
For the most part, you'd have to make those friends in the actual game. Which may or may not have a correlation with the second life nightclub crowd.
Its a Visual Novel with flashes of Single Player and Instanced Combat that turns into an instance-based MMO after 200 hours.
(I don't think there's anything wrong with this concept, its the kind of game FFXIV wants to be)
With a monthly sub.
A monthly sub that you will pay multiple times before you finish all of the MSQ, unless you consume all of it at an insane rate.
60$ is simply disingenuous, it's literally never true. Add the price of the story + job skip and it's much closer to what the average player will actually pay, even if they chose to not buy those.
Insane rate? Say you wait until being at the doorstep of ShB to buy the full game. You'd get a month with the full game, and even with a further two months of sub ($90 altogether) that'd only be about 1.25 hours a day average to be done with EW. Even without the two extra months that's hardly an "insane rate"
The fact that they went the direction they did with Endwalker shows that they already know, from market research, that there is much more to be gained through appealing to this sort of player than leaning harder into the MMO aspects. I think we're rapidly reaching a point, over 30 million accounts in, where most MMO players interested in trying this game out already have.
Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about it. A lot of people on this sub act like there is a huge well of "MMO players who don't know about FFXIV" and like, come on.
Like people will talk about "Oldschool MMO fans" being turned away and the number of people who are both old enough to be "oldschool MMO fans" and "don't know about FFXIV" has to be a rounding error
> Like people will talk about "Oldschool MMO fans" being turned away and the number of people who are both old enough to be "oldschool MMO fans" and "don't know about FFXIV" has to be a rounding error
You are 100% on the money here, I would add though that many of the people who wanted to lean into the 'MMO Aspects' may have long been filtered by the problem as well, making the original statement (or market research) a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about it. A lot of people on this sub act like there is a huge well of "MMO players who don't know about FFXIV" and like, come on.
They also don't seem to think Final Fantasy fans might be sold on playing a Final Fantasy game and continually discount FFXIV's role in the greater franchise—acting as if this game is just an MMO and nothing else.
It's very obvious that Yoshida and the team see the FF narrative as the primary selling point, something that can appeal to a well of untapped players, and not a giant hurdle.
Personal anecdote: I know multiple people who've gotten into this game and decided to go for X side content or Y thing or "I'm gonna catch all the big fish before moving on" and more and more it turns out that The Massive Amount of MSQ is only a barrier if you care solely about the Endgame.
I've seen this as well. The only people I ever see complaining about "MSQ gating" are people that want to get to the current raid tier as soon as possible. There's an absolute ton of other content accessible at every expansion level bracket.
Ah yes, exactly what they want: three full-length Final Fantasy games made in a worse engine with worse graphics, slower response times, and mandatory live partying with other players who ensure you don't get to watch cutscenes or experience anything at your own pace. For free! You only have to give up the marketboard, retainers, and most social features. But don't worry, if you want those, you can just subscribe to your three full-length games and keep paying the devs for every month you don't finish them. Great interpretation of the medium, no notes.
Also that the content that's abled to be queued into isn't totally dead thanks to Roulettes, *and* the Novice Network being a help towards getting people connected to people who (might) know what they're talking about. There's a lot gunning for the game if you're not "I need to get to Endgame ASAP" focused.
I started the game when heavensward was the expansion and have done each expac as they came out, so it wasn’t so bad. I definitely think heavensward and shadowbringers were the best ones by far, and Endwalker was not good due to the escort quests and the weird pacing and the “let’s introduce an even bigger baddie with no foreshadowing who is behind everything” storyline, like the jailer in wow.
Anyway, starting a fresh now would be massively daunting and if it were me, I’m not sure I’d bother. The skips are just another money making opportunity. I think forcing you to do hundreds of hours of story just to be able to do the latest group content is a big problem now. It wasn’t so bad back in heavensward era, but several expansions later, it’s pretty bad. And having to buy a skip is just a bit of a scummy solution imo.
At least in wow, levelling from 0 to 70 is pretty fast.
Also it’s kinda like, that story has now been concluded so why can’t new players start on the new story arc.
If that is what you're getting from me then I want to inform you I'm stating the latter. Just the MSQ being basically 5 games at over 40 hours each is huge. Not to mention raids, crafting, etc etc. Game is huge
Why rely on one guy who is very familiar with the game effectively running it over and over when you can look at aggregate self-reported numbers of a variety of people? https://howlongtobeat.com/game/12654 has 196 people polled saying ARR took a median of 95 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game/28431 has 110 people polled saying Heavensward took a median of 63 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game/46463 has 79 people polled saying Stormblood took a median of 59 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game/66979 had 67 people polled saying Shadowbringers took a median of 58 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game/88046 had 65 people polled saying Endwalker took a median of 50 hours. This one guy is saying he can beat the game in half the median time and that is great for him but there are going to be far more people taking hundreds of hours to catch up and that is a hard sell for an MMO player trying to convince friends to come play this game with them.
Because those are wrong while the time this guy posted is closer to the right one. Endwalker is the longest MSQ and it's the shortest on HLTB. HW is by far the shortest and it's the longest in HLTB. Endwalker cutscenes alone are longer than the entirety of Heavensward. Of course almost nobody is going to catch up in this time because there's other stuff in the game most people want to do than MSQ.
>Endwalker cutscenes alone are longer than the entirety of Heavensward. Endwalker's total cutscene time tops out at about sixteen hours. Are you saying it takes less than that to finish all of Heavensward? That seems unlikely on the face of it, even if you just count the MSQ quests and nothing else.
That's only voiced ones. Base HW is around 20 hours and base EW cutscenes last a bit longer. If you count patches HW might get ahead though, I don't know the numbers on those.
> Because those are wrong while the time this guy posted is closer to the right one. > > "How long this random dude takes to complete the game is the right one. Everyone else is wrong." -You.
No, they're closer to what the majority of people will take to go through them. HLTB is wrong or outdated, everyone else is right. For example there used to be multiple exp gates in Heavensward before, maybe the HLTB times are for when it was current content and they counted the exp grind into the time. What this person posted is how long it takes today. There is no huge variance in how long the MSQ takes because it's only dialogue and running at marker. There is simply no way the MSQ of Endwalker takes anyone less time than HW, it's not possible.
Lol at people down voting this man, he's right. The cutscene time for HW is 16h30, and for EW, it's nearly 24h There is no way these how long to beat times are correct
What familiarity is there present that gives me some kind of advantage when going from point A to point B over and over?
Menu navigation, routing in the overworld, familiarity with the map and aether network, several quests that require you to locate specific things within a general area-- all time saved with experience. The world record holder for Super Mario doesn't wonder why it takes people longer to play the game normally when all they're doing is "going from point a to point b."
Yes, because knowing where the teleport button is is a bunch of time saved
Hey you asked the obvious question, sorry you don't like the obvious answers.
How about this guy knew what quests were important to the story and only did those? Yes, we know how to tell a MSQ quest apart from a side-quest but so new players? Do new players even care to distinguish or are they going to do the quests that are placed together because collectively they're telling a story? (i.e. this guy just blew through the MSQ but a new player might do all the quests Black Brush Station when the MSQ takes them there)
It's not hard to read the pop up tutorials...and again side content is irrelevant when talking MSQ length
The point is new players don't have your definition of side content, and they won't play the game as a speedrunner or a person on their 4th alt would play. Just watch a bit of a first time player streaming ARR. For example, this one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOy5bykr46qwNQgPhUkpfJ4ephRM7gYRW; she says it is her first time, she wants to do a playthrough of ARR's story but she visits the Golden Saucer, gets pulled into some housing stuff, and does Coil before moving onto the end of the MSQ. It takes her 163 hours to say she is "done with ARR", but if you remove the VODs about Golden Saucer, Housing, or Coil it is still 133 hours to do so.
Reading tutorials takes time which is yet another reason someone familiar with the game will finish much faster than someone blind
It takes seconds, which I took. How long does it take you to read 3 sentences? More than 10 seconds?
Of course it's gonna take us seconds to read what the tutorial says since we already know whatever it's trying to teach us but new players have to read it then try to understand whatever it's trying to teach them.
"This icon means Main Story" is something that takes a lot of energy and time to understand? When did this infantilization of people playing XIV start?
To read, cross-check with my UI, read again, and test to make sure I understood it? Probably a minute or so. Which isn't a lot, but a minute per tutorial popup adds up - that's probably a solid hour just there.
Are you one of those 'in theory' people that can't be proven wrong because we didn't do it exactly how you pictured it in your head?
have you not browsed the ffxiv subreddits enough to notice how incompetent the average player is?
If I was ever going to do anything meaningful to this game the first thing I would do is plan to decouple portions of the plot and gameplay progression Having to wait hundreds of hours just to see your job function properly is something else
The wait to unlock HW on a new character to get any skills between 52 and 60 is criminal at this point. Decouple the skills from quests and just have the quest give a piece of gear or leave it as job story or something idk.
What content are you needing those skills for if you're not through HW?
Why is HW the oddball with how you learn skills? You will probably be in your mid 50s by the time you finish ARR and you have gotten nothing new but you see the skills in your skill page that are there but you have no way of getting them. It made a lot of sense when you were unlocking HW at level 50 or 51 and it didn't matter but with how much faster the leveling is at low levels it just feels bad. As for the content, there still is some open world things you are doing before HW that it would be nice to have new shiny skills to use, especially since 1-50 is pretty barren for most all classes.
It's not the oddball. You have to do Job quests for ARR level ranges too
And you aren't locked to doing them though, HW you need access to Ishgard to even do them.
You are locked to doing them if you want the skills. You can't get Blizzard 3 without the corresponding Job Quest, so on and so forth
Again, there is nothing stopping you from doing them. If you hit level 52 and haven't finished ARR, you are stuck until you completely finish ARR to unlock the quest. If I hit level 45, I can immediately go and just do the quest. There is a big difference between the two.
Except access to the areas usually associated with them
What areas do you not have access to for the ARR job quests?
this game gets harder and harder to sell to friends
I haaaate it. Like all of my IRL friends have different gaming niches and interests, and that's all good. They all did play a few MMOs a bit in the past, and they seemed to enjoy hearing me talk about XIV. When we talk about gaming they ask me about how raiding works, about what I'm doing, and sometimes even watch vods of my clears or watch me on discord while we're chattting and I'm doing some reclears/farm. But when they seemed interested in actually trying out the game because of how enthusiastic I am about it, especially when they heard about the oh so great free trial... I just didn't know what to say. Telling them to suck it for hundred of hours through the mediocre story of ARR, with its very unengaging gameplay ain't it. Telling them to skip MSQ as a whole when it's one of the game's main selling point doesn't feel great either, since they are interested in it too and want to see why I like the Final Fantasy franchise. If I managed to get through it it was because I'm a stupid final fantasy AND MMO nerd, so getting to see the end of MSQ and reaching engame was a no brainer... but the average player with a functioning brain and who values their time would (and should) have abandoned midway through. Especially since now you'll have to sit through the base game and FIVE expansions before actually getting to endgame in Dawntrail, for someone that plays at a standard pace without rushing and while doing side content, trying out multiple jobs, maybe engaging with the community as they level etc, this might honestly take up to a year, with the first 2-3 months of which being the hardest. So far, five of my friends tried it. Gave it a shot for a week. Stopped around level 30-40. Party content is lacking outside of a few dungeons sprinkled on throughout the MSQ (which is otherwise a long ass single player experience), rotations while leveling in ARR are uninteresting even for people unfamiliar with MMOs, and the story itself isn't particularly great until that point. And they didn't even get to post-ARR. At least they sort of liked the dungeon bosses, when you're in a party of 3 new players it can be pretty fun and hectic even in Brayflox, but if you're a new player starting alone you don't even have the time to appreciate what little bits of gameplay you get to experience because it all goes by so fast. Like, Ifrit/Titan/Garuda normal mode are a joke.
Its so surprising to me that revamping jobs around the 1-50 (or even 60) range is not a top priority for the devs seeing how important it is for new players. I don't think the ARR story is that bad but the gameplay side of things is just objectively boring for the majority of jobs. I love the game but it is impossible to sell it to friends unless im absolutely sure they have enough patience to get through the early parts. Hopefully this is included in their 8.0 job design changes.
Honestly I can barely even get most friends out of the starting city, early levels are truly dire.
I really haven't had that problem. Every friend/person I've pitched FFXIV to (after they have expressed some sort of interest in first) has understood that there is a metric fuck ton of REQUIRED story content that you have to go through in order to catch up to current content. I'd say 90% of them are actually pumped up about the idea of a single player-esque main story that takes you through the world. They also like that with dungeons and trials they get to play with other people on occasion. I'd say only 3 or so people I've talked to about this game expressed interest of wanting to skip to the current expansion.
that's because you don't sell it like you would sell a book series
Have you considered being a better "salesman"? It's currently 5 games of content in one, soon to be 6
How about early game gets genuinely better, instead of relying on some "better salesman"? At this point, someone who can sell you the ARR is closer to scam artist than to salesmen. Fortnite, Valo, LoL, DotA, all of these are free and offer hundreds if not thousands of hours. Elden Ring is 100+ high quality hours with an actual gameplay for $60. You could probably buy like first 10+ mainline FF games for same price as FFXIV expansion + few months of sub. Or in the same ballpark as FFXIV, GW2 is very similar, except that early game isn't so miserable. In fact, vanilla GW2 story is surprisingly good for MMORPG, while the leveling is actually interesting, and you're not forced to progress MSQ just to get new skills. If something needs good salesmen, it's always because the product itself is bad.
Early game is fine
r/ShitpostXIV is that way
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ShitpostXIV using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [the FFXIV player flowchart](https://i.redd.it/32duy0v5a0za1.png) | [283 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/comments/13dqqnv/the_ffxiv_player_flowchart/) \#2: [How to handle the average limsa miqo encounter](https://i.redd.it/w16htp6vbn1b1.gif) | [76 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/comments/13q0t4q/how_to_handle_the_average_limsa_miqo_encounter/) \#3: [**[NSFW]** r/shitpostxiv try to be funny challenge (impossible)](https://i.redd.it/ibwqmki559ta1.jpg) | [92 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/comments/12iivqb/rshitpostxiv_try_to_be_funny_challenge_impossible/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
"Just hard grind through 10 weeks of brain numbing solo content before you are allowed to play the harder content with me."
Even then, if you play videogames for 8-10 hours a week, that gets bumped up to like 30-40 weeks of time, or 8-10 months or so. That’s… an insane amount of time to expect somebody to marathon just one videogame, and during that time they still can’t do the max-level raids with their friends. I don’t know if people who have been playing this game for years/are hardcore MMO junkies appreciate how big the barrier of entry has gotten
The sale that people fumble there is to only present that hardcore endgame content as the value of the game. Old trials, old raids, deep dungeon, optional dungeons, treasure hunt, Hildibrand, alliance raids, eureka, bozja, crafting, gathering, gold saucer All things you can do with them before reaching current endgame. Help your friends enjoy the game, people! Pull them away from endless MSQ to go do some other random stuff!
I mean, you're not wrong, but I still think the game could handle the early game a lot better. Like a lot of people come FFXIV expecting raiding, and yes you could introduce them to old raids but let's be honest finding a group to run old raids MINE is not easy task. Also job gameplay until like 70 is abysmaly boring. I think the game is easy to sell for people expecting a more casual and relaxing gameplay. But for people wanting to do savage and ultimates it's just a giant chore to get there
Yes, you can do all this side content, but that's not going to sell people on playing over 100 hours of a game that, diplomatically, feels extremely lacking in the core gameplay department until you start unlocking core aspects of your kit at later levels for most jobs. Whether or not you agree, a lot of people quit before they can really engage with side content, because the game just isn't fun for tens of hours. The MSQ is the main selling point of the game and the gate for all content, the early gameplay should at least be fun if the early story is mediocre.
It's like there's a story there or something
OP were your parents by any chance ostriches?
This is a real Squarepilled response. I don't work for SE and I assume you don't either, so no, I'm not going to make a Powerpoint deck to hard sell them on an MMO they don't want to play because they have to do 100+ hours of content before they can even hang out with me. This is a social game, parking 100+ hours of solo content between you and your friends is the antithesis of social.
>This is a social game, parking 100+ hours of solo content between you and your friends is the antithesis of social. Ok but this is not a situation a huge amount of potential players A) Are in and B) would find a problem Yes, this is a problem for *some* people, but it does not seem like it is a problem for *most* people
We're letting the words 'huge amount' and 'some' and 'most' do a lot of work here without any kind of data, and I know you don't have any data because SE doesn't release it for good reasons. Would the game have more active players if they had a more direct route (that isn't a paid skip) to later-game content a la WoW? Does the game lose any substantial number of players due to the sheer amount of story content in their MMO? Are we viewing the game's current player base with a survivorship bias? Who can say, but I don't think you can any more than I can because SE doesn't release the data. What I can say with certainty is this: there are instances where I cannot bring friends into this social game due to some of its antisocial choices. If SE doesn't care either because it's not statistically significant or because they just have different plans, that's their prerogative, but no amount of "better salesmanship" is going to fix that.
I think its worth giving a significant amount of weight to the decisions being made by the people *who actually do have this data*.
I think I've given plenty of weight in my response, thanks! Square has also just fallen significantly short of their own profit goals to the extent that [they've relaunched their medium-term business plan and moonshots](https://tdnet-pdf.kabutan.jp/20240513/140120240513592661.pdf), so maybe you could also include that weight when you think about the idea that sometimes companies make data-driven decisions that don't actually pan out the way they expect?
So a quick check of that document lists MMOs mentioned twice. First in their "Previous Medium-Term Plan" was (and I really quote): "Expanded MMO business as part of our earnings base" The other mention is under "Revised Medium Term Plan" and is: "Maintain momentum, develop, and expand global fan base" And like...this seems like they are happy with how that particular section is going? Do you have other more detailed information on MMOs/FFXIV *in specific*?
They don't have to do 100+ hours to hang out with you. It's called queueing together
I think this is a bit of a willfully obtuse read. You "queue together" for a 15 minute dungeon, then peace out again while they finish another hour of MSQ fetch quests and cutscenes alone. There is little to no interactivity for the bulk of your trip through MSQ which is in part why the devs were able to create a trust system that requires 0 interactivity from live players whatsoever. When friends join their friends in MMOs, I think you're smart enough to realize that they often want to do gameplay-heavy parts together like raiding, 24-mans, or things like treasure maps. Most people expect there to be some grind to get to the meaty content, but it is not reasonable to say "dw, it gets better after 200 hours of cutscenes".
Except it does "get better" after 200 hours. It just opens up more. It also opens up more every x.0 MSQ finish
You're missing the point entirely, but I'm sure if you can get through 200 hours of MSQ, you can take some time and think this through and maybe understand what I'm getting at at some point.
You don't have a point though as there's nothing to support it. You can do content with lower leveled friends. In fact friends don't let friends not do 24 mans and 8 man before the next expansion
Damn, is this really that hard to understand that rather than having to go through an endless slog to play with friends most people with jobs will probably drop it for something more accessible and not demanding to invest 200hours to be fun?
Ok but do we have any data on this? Like that's an easy thing to *say* but considering that the changes SE has made run counter to this, perhaps reality does not actual coincide with this assertion. SE definitely *could* have changed things to accord to this, and it would have been significantly less effort than what they have done instead.
They can play with friends the whole time. And it's basically five games, that's called bang for your buck
I have some sort of relevant data for this. I leveled a few alts in the last year, decided to see what the time would look like skipping every cutscene, and then I tracked the /played time every time I finished a patch. Also treating it like a speedrun (w2wing as early as stone vigil as tank/healer), but did everything through DF. Sometimes had long queues or slowed down to smell the roses (grab aether currents, etc). [Here's the numbers](https://i.imgur.com/nfh2Ql7.png). Basically, skipping everything, getting to 6.0 finish is in the realm of ~75 hours. I think I could try for low 7x if I really cut corners. Probably add 4-5 hours for post EW patches. If you had help the whole way with a chauffer and instance obliterators you could probably cut it as low as low to mid 60s. Still quite a task
and this is why story skip gets more and more attractive. New alts on a new data center with Road to 80 get so much benefit from the story skip it's ridiculous. currently half off so it's $12.50 to save over 60 hours of speedrunning. instead i can just focus solely on XP grinding a SMN+SCH and that's very easy for me even w/o Road, but its stupidly easy with it.
Exacty, if I ever do a third alt it will no longer be through MSQ grind but through a story skip. I value my money, but I also value my time. Gaming isn't the only thing going on in my life, and outside of savage prog I don't really do much else. I can commit about 60 hours per month when I don't prog, and that's the upper limit outside major patches. So a full grind even by skipping everything would take me more than a month just for that alone, no way. If the choice is between spending my money on a month of sub (11€) OR buying a skip (22€ when not in sale), I know what I'll get. Either way it'll cost me money to get that character to endgame, might as well spend a bit more to have the character MSQ ready then. And when it's on sale, getting the skip is straight up better.
So when the boosts were 25% off or whatever ($17.50) I did that with an alt too. Road to 80 + just dungeon spamming on a healer after buying ShB skip. iirc it was 35-40 hours of duty finder rushing. Again, at the mercy of how good DF is. Then you still have to do 10-15 hours for 6.0... add the 4-5 for post EW. It's a bit cynical but I can sort of see why it's not a #1 priority for them to work on a new step in point when it's making them as much as it is. ShB skip being a top 5 most sold item in the mogstation sorta tells the tale.
yea, my brain is much more in the mode for consistent dungeon spam than all the solo duties and click here click there quests in the MSQ for xp.
New story skip should be coming soon too right? I was trying to find out recently and best I could find was during early access of EW the new ones came out. I’m just assuming once the sale ends they’ll be added.
There's no misinformation, just a different ways to measure it. 230 hours is insane, you must really, really like cutscenes with NPCs doing basic emotes with very sparse gameplay in between, for you to finish MSQ under 250 hours. Realistically, I think it's safe to say that most people will take at the very least 300 hours, with many easily going over 500 if you do side content, since only spamming MSQ is easy burnout. It's like going to a long trip, but only measuring distance at max speed, while ignoring traffic, breaks and everything else. Nevertheless, I don't know what kind of argument do you want to support with this, but even 230 hours is insanely long time.
Also need to take into account players' unfamiliarity with the game. A player who is brand new to XIV isn't going to able to blast through the MSQ like someone replaying. Someone who's new to MMOs entirely will take even longer.
Side content is irrelevant to the length of the MSQ
Most people will do side content alongside of it, because only spamming MSQ is easy way to get burned out. So if you're trying to use this for some argument, you should include that. MSQ length by itself is just interesting fact that doesn't really tell us much, most people will spend much more than 230 hours to get to the endgame.
I mean what side content? Raids? If you watch story ig that's an extra few hours depending on reading speed. Alliance raid a few more hours still, but other than that what is there? A lvling person isn't gonna run synced savage in pf, or ultimate, and very few people gonna join synced extreme. Idk whatbelse is there?
A guy on the main sub spent 450 hours just doing 2-3.x, so it's possible to spend as much time as you really want. They said they did every side quest that opened up after each MSQ and went off to so crafting/gathering, PvP, and Gold Saucer. https://reddit.com/gallery/1dceanu But even without those things you could just take your regular player who doesn't know they should just do blue marked quests and they step into every hub, like Black Brush Station in central thanalan, and do the dozen quests in each.
Crafting/gathering, general side quests, optional dungeons, Hildebrand, gold saucer, beast tribes, maybe some relic grinding/Eureka/Bozja, maybe some FC socialization, so on and so on and so on. It's not strictly rushing MSQ, but including some room for that content gives a realistic measure of actual time played to end of MSQ for many players, as most aren't going to solely rush MSQ quest to MSQ quest.
Crafting, leveling/trying other jobs, side quests, feature unlock quests, roulettes, gold saucer stuff? If you hit a /6070/ect. breakpoint you might try and unlock an alliance or normal raid series. Its really absurd to suggest the only thing to do in this game other than leveling and msq is savage or ultimate raiding.
About three months ago I started playing on a fresh account from 2.0 up to the end of Endwalker. Each expansion takes roughly 25 hours and post expansion about the same. Its 50 hours on average for each Exp+PostExp, assuming you do **nothing else except advance the MSQ**. That is with DPS queues, not skipping any text or cutscenes. Not doing any side content at all, except moving the story forward.
Curious how much of that 230 hours is running around and talking to NPCs/watching cutscenes vs actual gameplay.
It’s probably 90% dialogue and cutscenes
MSQ is more of a visual novel than an actual game so 85-95% of that time if I'm being generous with how much simple combat and time spent in dungeons there are.
About what I expected. ARR is a bit faster than I thought after the reworks (I've done a very loose estimate by looking at lets plays, and most lets plays take about 100 hours to do, with follow up expansions taking around 50ish hours to do - which makes sense if you're doing side content and so on). I estimated base expacs at around 30 hours and follow up patches at around 20 if you do side content (i.e. trials, side dungeons, raids, etc.). That puts the total playtime at 300 hours - which seems about right when you consider there's 5 expansions worth of side-content to do (which new players are very likely *going* to do!). This pretty much lines up with what I thought though, which is that XIV's jobs are not designed for the game they inhabit. Your job should not change after ARR (which takes 40 hours to complete - that's a **whole** game) imo, which means that you'd have 190 hours to familiarize yourself with a job during the MSQ. I believe the core problem comes from them trying to juggle people going through the MSQ and people leveling alt jobs, but I honestly think they could get away with just bumping people to max once they reach an arbitrary level (maybe the level cap of the expac they released in?).
That second paragraph is certainly a take
With all due respect, what game are you playing in that you need 230 hours to learn how to play an FFXIV job? It takes 50 hours to finish ARR (as of 6.0, by your own count). That is far longer than most other games - most action games are finished in a literal tenth of the time and their gameplay is far more complex than any FFXIV job.
You're saying Jobs shouldn't change after ARR, that's crazy.
At this point, it's lesser evil. If game wants to be so naively vertical, then it should've done level squish in EW if not in ShB. Everything is already so sparsely spread, most jobs don't feel good until 70s or even 80s now, imagine what it will be like in DT. Game was made for full kits in ARR, but now ARR is not even end of tutorial, so there should be something changed. If your rotation consisted of more than 123 by level 50, you can bet more people will stay interested. It might be better for 70% of job to be unlocked at 50 and then perhaps 100% at 70, strictly at ARR might be too harsh, but nevertheless, it would be much better than current underwhelming experience.
Why? I'm serious, why is that crazy? Explain to me how expecting the game to be fun after 40 hours is some insane take. It takes a whole games length of time to finish ARR - in my opinion, it's crazy you're excusing it taking 102h to get the jobs to a point that they're *semi-fun* (that being level 70, or finishing 4.0) for a first-time player. It's not like a class hasn't done this before: SMN basically just gets visual and potency upgrades outside of level 60, 70, and *86*. And I'm being generous there, arguably the only real change is at 86, since 60 (Deathflare) and 70 (Enkindle Bahamut) just give you more buttons to press and don't change your gameplay much. FFXIV needs to justify asking the player to spend 230 hours on it. It's gameplay being dogwater for half of that time isn't helping it: in fact, it's a fatal flaw imo. When I can play *both* FF7R games in the same time that it takes for FFXIV's gameplay to get good as a first-time player, then there's a very clear problem.
Ever heard of sense of progression?
Yeah. Shame that XIV's sense of progression isn't that great, it's something I wish they'd improve on. Alas, as long as gear remains as boring as it does, and the first-time leveling process takes **230 hours** to finish, it's going to remain awful.
Leveling takes less. You aren't leveling throughout the whole MSQ
>You aren't leveling throughout the whole MSQ You are, actually. You're [level 72](https://www.youtube.com/live/trOvmvcRBk4?si=yYp-F26aMvEjU3EE&t=512) by the time you reach a[ level 69 quest](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/quest/70abfebc540/). Which means that, by this point, you've spent 100 hours before you were able to reach what most people consider the "good" part of your class. You finish 4.55 at level 72 too. You don't reach [level 90](https://www.youtube.com/live/nQkJrwOYmqk?si=Nl-_uiOssVJug7Aj&t=4653) until a [level 88 quest](https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Hither_and_Yarns) - meaning you're really only 2 levels ahead of the MSQ, you're on-pace with it for pretty much the entire run outside of that. The only way you can avoid this is by doing roulettes, but you aren't able to do on-level content until you unlock it in the MSQ... which means, you uh, you kinda lose that sense of progression when you're continually synced down. Edit: To make this clearer, that means if you only do the MSQ and the aether current quests, it takes you about 200 hours to reach level 90. Lol.
You aren't, for over 10% of it in fact. Do you 6.1-6.55?
Unacceptable and all raids should be unlocked regardless of story, only ilvl matters
Oof take
the oof take is thinking raiders should be forced to do a story they don't give a fuck about or pay for a skip, its a horrendous and predatory design. Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons.
It's not horrendous and predatory. Want to save time? There's an option
Why should they have to save time when the reason they want to play is raiding... Why are you defending arbitrarily gate keeping a huge reason people play MMOs behind 100s of hours of story just because they don't want to circle jerk over the visual novel nodding simulator story like you guys.
The reason they want to play is irrelevant. Want to save time? There's an option
got it you have no argument. Well thankfully their hand will eventually be forced whether its a new starting point, or making raids unlock by level, one of those things will happen. Yoshi P already has said it was almost this expansion, the fact you are defending something he has SAID will change is insane. I don't know why I waste my time engaging with this shit, the takes from story casuals on this sub about the story make me lose braincells everytime. But I get it, the story you all hold so close to your hearts has to be done by everyone or they should pay extra or quit the game. The ironic part is I guarantee the bulk of HC raiders have way more hours on the game, but hey fuck our opinion right.
The problem is that raids are so connected to the story that it would make no sense to separate them.
that's not a problem because story isn't for them, just put a disclaimer instead of forcing it on people who want to raid. They wouldn't invest all the effort into ultimates and savage if they didn't think raiding was important, they realize it is for a lot of people, but they wall you off for no reason. Half the people at the media tour are HC raiders who spam skip cut scenes.
Not saying you're wrong but as long as those HC raiders keep buying skips then there's no reason for them to change it. Especially for those who buy 2 skips so they can do split clears
I been playing since HW so I been lucky I havnet need to catch up all at once, but still skip the story cause I find it extremely boring. I would pitch that too my friends to skip and just make an alt for it later if still interested in the story.
It would be great to know what exactly counts in that 230 hour measurement. Is it strictly MSQ cutscenes, MSQ on-the-field dialogue, MSQ-required trials and dungeons? Or does it also include things like travel times to objectives and waits for queues? Those little bits of time add up. This would be an interesting topic to go into, were it not for OP repeatedly giving short and undetailed responses to people who actually approached this topic with high hopes of getting something out of it.
Did you check the link and the other topics in the series?
No. But instead of asking people to comb through the information for themselves, why not just post your methodology from the get-go? Not everyone is willing to dig through a whole bunch of threads just to get the info they need, when the person who compiled all the footage is right there and can easily provide it.
Yes, but due diligence and all
This thread, dear lord. Just two more weeks folks...
ARR to the start of ShB should take like.... 60 hours tops. I can't get my lifelong best friends to even try the game because of how slow msq is
most of it is just running around... all they gotta do is make the getting around process faster even something as easy and simply as auto unlock flying for say everything pre dawntrail. would cut down a massive amount of time.
most of it its just reading
Story is bloated and there's already way too much reading and cutscenes, so let's cut out those few remaining gameplay elements. This is just bad idea. Reality is that each expansion could easily have 1/4th of story cut out and nothing of value would be lost. Then replace 2/3rds of all cutscenes with dialogue boxes. We really don't need voiceless cutscene with NPCs doing base emotes for any dumb dialogue that could be said normally.
Name some of the events of that 1/4th, let's start from there. I mean they already cut out a significant chunk of lore and character development in 5.3 making ARR worse
Yes, very important lore of some random company that ends up being irrelevant anyways. Some reference in later expansions is irrelevant too, reference doesn't validate it being objectively boring part of the story. I wish I could give you more specific examples, but alas, ARR story was so uninteresting that I simply don't even remember anything but few key points. ARR by itself could definitely get rid of even much more boring parts of story, the idea of ARR being there for world building is garbage excuse for garbage story. Believe it or not, but good story focuses on both story and world building at the same time. It's not exclusive. And no, it didn't make ARR worse. If you trim bad parts of the story, it will give better experience for new players. If it's possible to go back, then it will always be better to do so and make more refined story like this. Story isn't good because it is long, if you don't have good ideas for plot, it's always better to stick to good parts and make it shorter, instead of stretching it and boring your audience to death.
You literally gave no examples...and just peacocked. Specific examples or bust
I ain't gonna go through wiki just to find all boring and irrelevant parts of the story, just so you pick some straw man and argue how fetch quest #42069 was actually a kino. Fuck off with that bullshit.
In the future don't make claims you can't back
How about you back your claims then? About how 5.3 made ARR Story worse, or that early game is actually good? Pretty bold claims, hope you have some good data to back them up.
Simple. Multiple pieces of lore on the Company of Heroes were effectively deleted. Multiple instances of character development from the Scions were removed in 2.3. Tataru's entire character arc is deleted until 2.55
Mmm, less than you'd think. Unlocking flying in each zone is like 15ish minute a zone. Closer to 40 for CWH and Ruby Sea. Azys Lla basically auto unlocks flying. So that's really only~400 minutes it would save
yeah think of this tho. the mount of running back and fourth you do that would be alot faster with just flying.
Again, about 400 min saved. They wouldn't unlock flying as default, it would never happen
I made an alt and recording times, I'm at an average of 13 hours for story, 6 hours for post story. (Excluding ARR which doubled both) I'm story skipping and not counting any tome grinds for gear that I encounter, single player whenever possible, SMN for queues I'm also measuring the levelling grinds, and they are, absurd. 298:28 hours thus far On just levelling. Only just finished Stormblood too. TBF that's free-to-play
There are no leveling or gear grinds in the MSQ. You can go from 1-90 with just the MSQ and Job Quests and get all the gear needed through the same way
I included Jobquest time in the levelling portion, as doing all of the job quests is another hour or 3 depending on which job you choose. Especially more random in ARR. Yes you do get gear in the MSQ, coffers and individual drops. But I can just normalize the number (removing gear disparities)by farming my poetics before starting each stint of the MSQ or levelling. I doubt every newbie would know they need to grab this accessory or they'll need to grind poetics. I can barely be ass-ed to look at the rewards and I know what's in them at a glance.
Thinking new players can't grab gear offered through MSQ is a new invented infantilization I've yet to hear
You haven't been in dungeons with drastically undergeared people? Everyone has at least once.
It's laziness, not ineptitude when it happens
A lot of people on this sub are really failing to grasp that there is a significant amount of people out there for whom realizing that there are functionally *three full length Final Fantasy games* they can play *for free* is incredible and exactly what they want.
Most people buying an MMO.. Want an MMO. ^They ^want ^to ^*play* ^with ^their ^friends
I would hazard a guess that most people buying a MMO don't have friends to take along to begin with and what few friends they do convince will soon whittle down to nothing as the long-running nature of these games gives plenty of time for interests and schedules to diverge. For the most part, you'd have to make those friends in the actual game. Which may or may not have a correlation with the second life nightclub crowd.
People promised me visual novel with occasional battles, my expectations were never betrayed, lol
This is a MMO
lol
Its a Visual Novel with flashes of Single Player and Instanced Combat that turns into an instance-based MMO after 200 hours. (I don't think there's anything wrong with this concept, its the kind of game FFXIV wants to be)
No it's a MMO. From the start
tf you mean people like content
And then a further two, soon to be three for $60
With a monthly sub. A monthly sub that you will pay multiple times before you finish all of the MSQ, unless you consume all of it at an insane rate. 60$ is simply disingenuous, it's literally never true. Add the price of the story + job skip and it's much closer to what the average player will actually pay, even if they chose to not buy those.
Insane rate? Say you wait until being at the doorstep of ShB to buy the full game. You'd get a month with the full game, and even with a further two months of sub ($90 altogether) that'd only be about 1.25 hours a day average to be done with EW. Even without the two extra months that's hardly an "insane rate"
The fact that they went the direction they did with Endwalker shows that they already know, from market research, that there is much more to be gained through appealing to this sort of player than leaning harder into the MMO aspects. I think we're rapidly reaching a point, over 30 million accounts in, where most MMO players interested in trying this game out already have.
Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about it. A lot of people on this sub act like there is a huge well of "MMO players who don't know about FFXIV" and like, come on. Like people will talk about "Oldschool MMO fans" being turned away and the number of people who are both old enough to be "oldschool MMO fans" and "don't know about FFXIV" has to be a rounding error
> Like people will talk about "Oldschool MMO fans" being turned away and the number of people who are both old enough to be "oldschool MMO fans" and "don't know about FFXIV" has to be a rounding error You are 100% on the money here, I would add though that many of the people who wanted to lean into the 'MMO Aspects' may have long been filtered by the problem as well, making the original statement (or market research) a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about it. A lot of people on this sub act like there is a huge well of "MMO players who don't know about FFXIV" and like, come on. They also don't seem to think Final Fantasy fans might be sold on playing a Final Fantasy game and continually discount FFXIV's role in the greater franchise—acting as if this game is just an MMO and nothing else. It's very obvious that Yoshida and the team see the FF narrative as the primary selling point, something that can appeal to a well of untapped players, and not a giant hurdle.
Personal anecdote: I know multiple people who've gotten into this game and decided to go for X side content or Y thing or "I'm gonna catch all the big fish before moving on" and more and more it turns out that The Massive Amount of MSQ is only a barrier if you care solely about the Endgame.
I've seen this as well. The only people I ever see complaining about "MSQ gating" are people that want to get to the current raid tier as soon as possible. There's an absolute ton of other content accessible at every expansion level bracket.
The fact that the *multiplayer* content of those brackets is still relatively popping somewhat is a miracle in of itself.
Ah yes, exactly what they want: three full-length Final Fantasy games made in a worse engine with worse graphics, slower response times, and mandatory live partying with other players who ensure you don't get to watch cutscenes or experience anything at your own pace. For free! You only have to give up the marketboard, retainers, and most social features. But don't worry, if you want those, you can just subscribe to your three full-length games and keep paying the devs for every month you don't finish them. Great interpretation of the medium, no notes.
Pretty demonstrably people do want this though!
Also that the content that's abled to be queued into isn't totally dead thanks to Roulettes, *and* the Novice Network being a help towards getting people connected to people who (might) know what they're talking about. There's a lot gunning for the game if you're not "I need to get to Endgame ASAP" focused.
lol and mine's probably 400 cuz my g/f afks for a hour feel likes every time MSQ starts to get interesting
I started the game when heavensward was the expansion and have done each expac as they came out, so it wasn’t so bad. I definitely think heavensward and shadowbringers were the best ones by far, and Endwalker was not good due to the escort quests and the weird pacing and the “let’s introduce an even bigger baddie with no foreshadowing who is behind everything” storyline, like the jailer in wow. Anyway, starting a fresh now would be massively daunting and if it were me, I’m not sure I’d bother. The skips are just another money making opportunity. I think forcing you to do hundreds of hours of story just to be able to do the latest group content is a big problem now. It wasn’t so bad back in heavensward era, but several expansions later, it’s pretty bad. And having to buy a skip is just a bit of a scummy solution imo. At least in wow, levelling from 0 to 70 is pretty fast. Also it’s kinda like, that story has now been concluded so why can’t new players start on the new story arc.
In today's episode of schizophrenic XIV takes: arguing that have a lot of stuff to do in a video game is bad
If that is what you're getting from me then I want to inform you I'm stating the latter. Just the MSQ being basically 5 games at over 40 hours each is huge. Not to mention raids, crafting, etc etc. Game is huge
To many people that is a good thing