Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

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Where's my god damn relic tools showcase you fucks. I did your bullshit crafting grind I want to be rewarded.

I'm still genuinely bummed that Dawntrail wasn't a fun, low stakes vacation adventure. I wish we could just go save a kingdom from dragons and/or the pope again instead of needing to save the multi-verse.
 
I'm still think they should have made 7.0 a fresh starting point for new players. The scions story was completed, now they can start fresh with new characters. Though as we saw with the new characters we actually got, it probably would have ended up worse.

As it stands now, the msq is a huge stone around the necks for new players. It's dozens of hours just to get to where your friends are. Those hours aren't even going to be that fun as you spend it all reading text and being level synced in dungeons.
 
Road Work Ahead said:
As it stands now, the msq is a huge stone around the necks for new players. It's dozens of hours just to get to where your friends are. Those hours aren't even going to be that fun as you spend it all reading text and being level synced in dungeons.
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By the time I caught up to my friends they'd already quit the game, and even if they hadn't there's just nothing enjoyable to do as a group especially since Dawntrail was next.
 
Road Work Ahead said:
I'm still think they should have made 7.0 a fresh starting point for new players. The scions story was completed, now they can start fresh with new characters. Though as we saw with the new characters we actually got, it probably would have ended up worse.

As it stands now, the msq is a huge stone around the necks for new players. It's dozens of hours just to get to where your friends are. Those hours aren't even going to be that fun as you spend it all reading text and being level synced in dungeons.
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I remember right Yoshdia was talking about that all the way back during 6.1. instead of a catch up mechanic being implemented, they just decided to make everything able to do solo so you don't need other people to play the game.
 
Road Work Ahead said:
I'm still think they should have made 7.0 a fresh starting point for new players. The scions story was completed, now they can start fresh with new characters. Though as we saw with the new characters we actually got, it probably would have ended up worse.

As it stands now, the msq is a huge stone around the necks for new players. It's dozens of hours just to get to where your friends are. Those hours aren't even going to be that fun as you spend it all reading text and being level synced in dungeons.
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It's not dozens of hours, it's closer to hundreds.

Even if you blitz every objective, skip every cutscene, and get carried through every dungeon - it's probably ~100 hours until Dawntrail. If you're not doing that and actually trying to get into the game (and/or roll on a bad server or play DPS) - that number goes up exponentially.

WoW has the same problem but they circumvent it by including level boots with expansion releases - which is something that FFXIV can't easily do. They can have a MSQ version that cuts out a lot of the time-wasting but they seem committed to never removing content from the game under any circumstances.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Even if you blitz every objective, skip every cutscene, and get carried through every dungeon - it's probably ~100 hours until Dawntrail. If you're not doing that and actually trying to get into the game (and/or roll on a bad server or play DPS) - that number goes up exponentially.
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Perplexity says it's 200-250 hours just to get to Dawntrail.

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Why would anyone stick around for this when it gets worse in Dawntrail?
 
Tanner Glass said:
but they seem committed to never removing content from the game under any circumstances.
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As it should be. Removing content to "streamline" the progression just leads to people being unwilling to pick up the game because they know they're not getting the whole experience.
Honestly, if you're playing Final Fantasy to get to the "endgame" then you're doing it wrong.
I began playing FF14 in 2020 as I had to do something during the covid hysteria, I spent like three months in the ARR content because I was doing all the content in the expansion before beginning the next. Why would I immediately jump into Heavensward if I haven't done the bahamuth raids? There are still people doing the content so why skip it?
Is it really that important to get to yawntrail so you can experience the weakest story in the game?
The rush to endgame only became a thing in WoW because everything before the latest expansion is either dead or removed
 
Übertroon said:
As it should be. Removing content to "streamline" the progression just leads to people being unwilling to pick up the game because they know they're not getting the whole experience.
Honestly, if you're playing Final Fantasy to get to the "endgame" then you're doing it wrong.
I began playing FF14 in 2020 as I had to do something during the covid hysteria, I spent like three months in the ARR content because I was doing all the content in the expansion before beginning the next. Why would I immediately jump into Heavensward if I haven't done the bahamuth raids? There are still people doing the content so why skip it?
Is it really that important to get to yawntrail so you can experience the weakest story in the game?
The rush to endgame only became a thing in WoW because everything before the latest expansion is either dead or removed
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I agree, but, there's a lot of FFXIV content is explicitly filler content to pad out the story and that's what I'm suggesting gets removed.

A lot of 1-50 MSQ is huge filler - a bunch of talking, kill 1-3 overworld enemies, a bunch of talking, repeat. It can be condensed massively without actually losing anything in translation (the "collecting crystals for Garuda's fight" comes to mind). They paved over the "Return to Waking Sands" by just letting you teleport there, but, it's a huge un-needed timesink as well.

On top of that, every patch step (so like X.1, X.2, X.3, etc) is also stalled because the content is drip-fed over a period over two years but makes really dense and boring material when you have to slam through all of it in order. It can make for a nice break in line with the active game when you're spacing it out over 4-6 month intervals, but, a new player doesn't get to experience it that way.

I'm not saying just start in Dawntrail with 0 context, but, the MSQ has to get cut down to something actually interesting or manageable if they're actually going to look at growing the game in 2026 and beyond. It can and should be cut down with a lot of aims in mind.
 
Tanner Glass said:
I'm not saying just start in Dawntrail with 0 context, but, the MSQ has to get cut down to something actually interesting or manageable if they're actually going to look at growing the game in 2026 and beyond. It can and should be cut down with a lot of aims in mind.
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Just make a intro video going through the cliff notes of the story for the dopamine addicts that need to be in the final chapter NOW NOW NOW.
I can assure that even if it's just the most inconsequential of quests getting removed, you're not going to attract any of the people who need to blitz it to endgame so they can go somewhere else, and you'll just alienate the people who would like to try the game if they can experience the story as it was at launch.
I know several people who feel disinclined to play ff14 because ARR nuked the 1.0 content and they're afraid they'll thereby be a lesser player than the veterans
 
Übertroon said:
As it should be. Removing content to "streamline" the progression just leads to people being unwilling to pick up the game because they know they're not getting the whole experience.
Honestly, if you're playing Final Fantasy to get to the "endgame" then you're doing it wrong.
I began playing FF14 in 2020 as I had to do something during the covid hysteria, I spent like three months in the ARR content because I was doing all the content in the expansion before beginning the next. Why would I immediately jump into Heavensward if I haven't done the bahamuth raids? There are still people doing the content so why skip it?
Is it really that important to get to yawntrail so you can experience the weakest story in the game?
The rush to endgame only became a thing in WoW because everything before the latest expansion is either dead or removed
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For all the deadness and gayness of post Endwalker content, I think people definitely forget how much we're spoiled by how solid and cohesive the core of FFXIV is as an RPG that can be played alone or with friends. The fact that every expac is kept as integral story content means the devs have the incentive to keep the cohesion between expansions and sets it apart from just about any other MMO out right now. Tossing aside old content won't incentivise new players to join, it leaves them feeling like they've missed the party.

I honestly think what we have now is the best we'll ever get as far as pre-endgame experience. New players who want to join in still get the full story, almost all content bar ARR raids is still relatively playable, and it's a smooth enough grind that anyone can do it in their spare time without making it stressful. I'm completely serious in that I think far more new players are put off by the WoW mentality of skipping to endgame and leaving their heads spinning in circles (especially for JRPG fans who are perfectly used to a 100+ hour solo experience).
There will always be gamers out there with too much time on their hands; a long but casual grind retains them better than a short grind filled with inconsistencies and roadbumps because you need tribal knowledge to know what's relevant and what's dead.

As more expacs post EW get added, it would be the perfect time to make future expacs more 'skippable' and experiment with a more horizontal structure while keeping the core ARR-EW story as the new player experience rather than keep bloating it ever onward. But fundamentally altering the expansion structure after being consistent for so long would be a lot of effort for questionable reward, so I'm not surprised CBU3 aren't doing it.
 
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Sheep King said:
As more expacs post EW get added, it would be the perfect time to make future expacs more 'skippable' and experiment with a more horizontal structure while keeping the core ARR-EW story as the new player experience rather than keep bloating it ever onward. But fundamentally altering the expansion structure after being consistent for so long would be a lot of effort for questionable reward, so I'm not surprised CBU3 aren't doing it.
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Many people theorised the codex was a way to make things set for a skip for new players to post Endwalker, but that has yet to materialise.
One thing they could do is add a choice in some of the more boring quest chains if you want the quests as it was at launch, or if you want a condensed quest chain, thereby placating both the story skippers and the people with crippling FOMO
 
Sheep King said:
As more expacs post EW get added, it would be the perfect time to make future expacs more 'skippable' and experiment with a more horizontal structure while keeping the core ARR-EW story as the new player experience rather than keep bloating it ever onward. But fundamentally altering the expansion structure after being consistent for so long would be a lot of effort for questionable reward, so I'm not surprised CBU3 aren't doing it
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FFXI’s plot and its expansions are horizontal with their storytelling. Aside from one expansion (Rise of the Zilart, requires you to reach rank 6 of your nation’s story) and Rhapsodes of Vanadiel having checkpoints you need to clear from other expansions to continue the others don’t need any previous story progression. The expansions are mostly stand alone with loose connections and you can pretty much do them in any order you want as long as you meet the level requirements. I highly doubt XIV would even consider pivoting from a linear story to a more horizontal one though.
 
With new game+ that they added during Shadowbringers it'd be very easy to re-structure the game experience so that you'd get a new player to go through the MSQ like normal until they meet the Scions for the first time at level 17, then you can let them skip straight to the new expansion with a brief recap of what they've missed. Want to do the content you missed? Switch to a new job, switch on NG+ and start from the level 18 quests and go from there.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Even if you blitz every objective, skip every cutscene, and get carried through every dungeon - it's probably ~100 hours until Dawntrail. If you're not doing that and actually trying to get into the game (and/or roll on a bad server or play DPS) - that number goes up exponentially
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Not to mention you need to unlock Crystal Tower for the msq and you need to do class and job quests to unlock skills and jobs so that adds some time too. You also need to do at least one role quest line in ShB for the msq completion. I wonder if the devs will ever roll back the CT requirement since everyone hated that decision when they added the need to complete it. I knew many newbies that were struggling to get parties to help them clear the raids (even unsynced) because people either hated the raids and refused to touch them or there weren’t enough players online to help out. Not to mention most people end up skipping the cutscenes just to get it over with which defeats the purpose of making CT a requirement.

Also unrelated community drama under the spoiler tag.
I decided to check up on Lanselot/Athena out of curiosity to see what happened to him and because of boredom waiting for the latest news on the game.
Does this guy even have a job or a life? He pushes out at least 5 videos a day with clickbait titles. I skimmed through several of his recent videos and it’s just low effort yapping that has very little to do with the title of the video in question. He also started a series called “Interviewing the Zodiark Trancers” where he interviews trancers (apparently many of them embrace the trancer title nowadays and call themselves that) who were from the story criticism discord server despite none of the interviews having anything to do with trancer or official forums drama.
He also has an extreme obsession with hating a lorefag named Cleretic. He’s made multiple videos about them. I know very little about Cleretic outside of them being a lorefag that is an official forums regular who despises the ancients/ascians (especially Emet) and hates Shadowbringers while stanning Dawntrail as their favorite expansion and Calyx as their favorite villain. Does anyone know anything deep about Cleretic? Did they have a history with trancers or something?
Lanselot and his followers also keep claiming 8.0’s story got leaked yet I see nothing online about said leaks outside of a couple of old fake ones on 4chan.
 
SnowBall said:
Does anyone know anything deep about Cleretic?
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"saw" him (he didn't show his face but had his avatar) on some mrhappy stream, of course the first thing to come out of his dumb mouth was that his pronouns were she and her.

and also lolselot reads the farms and made a video out of this thread

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