 So, I want to talk about Final Fantasy XIV. Yeah, I'm obsessed with this game now. I've been sucked into an MMO! It's been my go-to primary comfort game for over a year now, and not a day goes by that it's not on my mind, and I wanted to share the really weird story about how I got to this point. Now, what I mean by the title was not I only started enjoying Final Fantasy XIV because I passed the 300 hour mark, nor is it saying that Final Fantasy XIV only gets good after 300 hours. It's more like it gets good if you actually be really patient and read the dialogue, or once you buy a story skip and just watch the cutscenes. Okay, that's kinda not true either. What I mean by it is that for over 300 hours, over the course of like 5 years, I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV wrong. Sort of. You can't actually play a game wrong. It's complicated. I'm about to go on a really long story about what those first 300 hours entailed for who knows how many minutes, so if you're someone who's been struggling to like the game like I was and want to know how I finally did it, you can just skip to this part of the video. Long story short, I bought a story skip and just watched the cutscenes, and also actually tried reading the text for once, no matter how agonizing some parts of it are. Oh, and also looked up where to unlock the fun content and give myself personal goals. There's also going to be a significant amount of the video criticizing portions of Final Fantasy XIV. That said, this is not a critique or a review of Final Fantasy XIV, but more so the criticism and dislikes are meant to express how I feel and give context to the story rather than anything constructive that I think would objectively improve the game. To be clear, any time I complain about parts of this game, it's merely to let you know how I felt at the time. Whenever I do make such complaints about the game, I will put a green chicken in the corner of the screen as a reminder of this point. Otherwise, the rest of the video is going to be a lot of rambling, but hey, maybe you like rambling. I don't know, flip this on and go do your dailies or something. I've been told I have a nice voice. Anyway, let us start at the start. The initial struggle. It's something like 2015 or 2016. I can't quite pin down the exact time, and I had just gotten my own laptop for college because you kind of need one no matter what major you're in. So being in graphic design, I get a pretty powerful one, conveniently powerful enough to run games on. I also had a fair bit of spare time on my hands one semester and was browsing through what free games were being played at the time since I had a budget of, uh, hmm. And then I see a hot new MMO called Final Fantasy 14 Online Colon, a realm reborn colon heaven's word with a really cool trailer and nice graphics and tall muscular women. And I thought, I don't know, I don't really have the money. And then I saw that there's a 14 day free trial and I thought, I still don't know. And then I saw that you can be a cat boy and I was like, yeah, sold. And so I downloaded the game after logging into the weirdly 2000s looking launcher. What? I was taken in by the grand title screen, the atmosphere, a character creation menu, a cool, immersive opening cutscene with so many plot hooks and mysteries waiting to be unraveled by the story and it plays like World of Warcraft, but slower, huh. So before this game, I was a big MMO junkie. I played WoW when I was a kid. It was around when the Iceman DLC had just come out, which many would consider peak WoW. But I don't think I really played long enough or was conscious enough being the dumb little kid that I was to really say I ever truly experienced WoW. At least not in WoW itself. I had played loads of other free-to-play MMOs that were pretty close to being WoW clones except probably a lot worse. I played Fiesta Online, Fly for Fun, Science of Fate, and a whole lot of Nexon games and a bunch of others. I was also very sick of tab targeting by this point in time and felt spoiled by playing things like Terra Online and Dark Souls, so I quit the game until a few years later. The pre-trial period was extended to like the first 20 or 30 levels for an unlimited amount of time instead of the previous 14 day limit. And after making a new account because I forgot the password for the old one, I downloaded the game again and it was fun. In fact, this is the same character that I play today. Not because of the story. God no, after reading like two paragraphs to get through one fetch quest, it lost my interest. No, I was in it for the progression because that around this time I had just discovered crafting. And boy, that was a rabbit hole and a half sucking all my free time good and probably giving me a few past due projects that semester in the process. Now for those who don't know, trial accounts can't use the market board, which allows players to buy and sell other players items, including crafting materials. So I pretty much had to gather and craft each and everything for everything myself if I wanted to make some of the higher level recipes. And it was around this point that I decided, you know what, I like this game. I'll buy it. So it became the one game I bought that year. It was great. I bought and sold items on the market board, got my own chocobo, just unlocked glamour and dressing up my cat boy in some badass armor. Things were going great. Until I had to keep playing more of the main story quest. The thing about Final Fantasy 14 is that it doesn't overwhelm you with information and features and abilities like a few other games I know. It's great at slowly dishing out and introducing you to features. This is a double-edged sword, however, because in this case, it means you have to unlock everything. Raids, bosses, game features, sometimes entire areas have to be unlocked gradually. Some of them are locked behind blue quests that try to give context and maybe their own little story in the process of unlocking them. But most of it is unlocked behind the main story quest, or MSQ for short. Knowing I had to do them to get to the content I wanted made me really, really not like them. So I got incredibly bored and redownloaded a game with a good story instead. Fallout 4. Around this time, I think I clocked in about 60-80 hours of game time total, what many would call a first impression. Which is not totally off since I think I was only about halfway through the vanilla game's story at this point, something like the level 20 or 30 quests. But even then, I think professional B-person Barry Cramer said it right in his Death Stranding video. There's a saying that often comes up when recommending certain games, and that's it gets good after a couple or ten or twenty hours. When someone says that to me, I go, no thanks, I'd rather play a game that, oh I don't know, gets good after zero hours? I think we can all agree that it's totally reasonable to not have to spend an entire immigration process worth of a slog before you can start having fun, right? I'm sorry sir, but you misspelled the name of the Sultana. I'm afraid I'm going to have to reject your application to start playing the good part. What? How was I supposed to know I had to pay attention to the story of an MMO? We made an impressive opening cutscene for you with special animations and story hooks, and yet you still can't recall the name of your faithful companions. Of course I can, quiz me. Flynn Rider. Gwen Stacy. That's a pimp. Girl Who Says Bruh. Gay French best friend of Girl Who Says Bruh. Oh, you can't trick me, that's not a real character. At the time I was someone who hated reading anything that wasn't a Halo lore wiki page. On top of the fact that whenever I did read it was, to me, what sounded like meaningless nonsense that didn't matter. Who is this guy? Why should I care that he wants a pizza? I'll deliver it because I have to to progress the story, but this is dumb and I hate it. And now that most of 14's story is a slow burn and that that pizza will be a surprise tool we'll use later, but try convincing younger me that doing eight fetch quests in a row is going to be totally worth it, I promise, for realsies. So yeah, I was not grabbed by the story and the fact that I couldn't just ignore it because it unlocks all of the endgame bits made each quest feel like another obstacle keeping me from reaching the real game, especially when so many of the quests involve standing around, talking, but I'll get to that later. And it was as I started playing through the story and getting through all the quests that I started to realize, wow, I am not having fun. And it's at this point that I'm sure plenty of people will say, yeah, ARR is a slog, but Heaven's Word is when it really picks up. But no, this is how I felt after I beat Heaven's Word. Even the Dragon Song War, which many would say was peak main story quest content before Shadowbringers came out. And no, Shadowbringers being the best expansion now does not change the fact that everybody said Heaven's Word is still amazing and should be what hooks you and when the game starts to get really good. Because I know for certain most players would still agree with that opinion. I mean, heck, it's in all of the free trial memes right now. You call it the award-winning expansion. I beat Heaven's Word, the supposed peak of the game, at the time, and I was not having fun. So, I quit playing, again. Some of you who have been with the channel from the beginning may remember that I did stream 14 a bit around this time, and you may remember me giving my gripes and struggling to get through the game. So it's like, I hate to be negative, I'm being negative a lot. But like, I mean, when you look at this, this quest, when you look at a quest like this, that it's literally talk to someone, talk to someone else, walk on out to this map, talk to another person, and then come back here and talk to the person again, and then that's the quest. I know, I believe you. I believe you that it gets better. But it's hard to get invested when so many of the quests are like this. No side note that doesn't really matter to the overall story, but at the time I tried to play up my reactions and excitement to supposed important and impactful moments happening in the game. Partly because I was trying to be entertaining, but also because they had been hyped up, but to be perfectly honest, I didn't really feel the same excitement as everybody else. But I didn't really want to disappoint or invalidate anyone because they were all excited about this game, and I felt like such an outlier. Like, you know when you want to show your friend a really cool or funny video and it gets to the really good part and you're waiting to see their reaction? I felt like I was that friend the video was being shared with. Others were waiting on how I'd feel and hyping up the moment, here it comes, and so I guess I felt like I had to play it up. Dude, wasn't that cool? Did you see that? Oh my god, I cried at that part. Yeah, dude, that part was really awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Needless to say, I was frustrated that I was missing out. I really, really wanted to like this game. So why is it so hard to? Part 2. The Quests. Now, it wasn't my own fault for skipping the cutscenes and dialogue and not paying attention to the context of what I was doing. That was sort of... Partly yes, but I think it's unfair to say the game doesn't have some responsibility in keeping the player's attention so that they can feel compelled to continue to pay attention. That, and also I think that unless the game's stories are so deeply tied to its mechanics that you cannot have one without the other, that the gameplay part of the game should be able to stand and be engaging on its own. Whether or not you believe 14 does this, I think is going to be subjective. In my opinion, it's not a story that needed to be told with an MMO, and I think it could possibly have benefited from being a different type of game entirely, and I do also believe that the game can stand on its own without the story, and that you should be allowed to enjoy it without the story. Understandably, there's a fair bit of people who would have a word with that first part. Asking people online, I've been told some more interesting perspectives looking at 14 and how it achieves its story in ways I hadn't thought of before. Namely, 14's MMO nature means it can achieve such a story that is built over a long period of time with an active community, and can achieve an enhanced level of personal investment and in-game nods back to said community that would not be the same with a single player game. The relaunch of the game being tied to an in-universe apocalyptic event being one of the most prominent examples, but that's not super relevant to the point I'm trying to make anyway. For the longest time, I did not feel compelled to read all of the dialogue because a big chunk of the game showed me it was not worth reading. Woo! A realm reborn! Let's gooo! This wine is my own creation, and I would be most grateful if you delivered! Granted, writing is an art and not a science, so as much as I say it should have had a better story, it's not like the writers just forgot to push the make good story button, so I acknowledge that for plenty of people, they probably did not have the same issue I did. For plenty of people, the story was probably engaging and great all the way through. I do, however, think the questing themselves could have been much more engaging. Or just cut down. And that was my main problem with getting into the game's main story. The quests were not fun. Travel from place to place talking to 8 NPCs only to go all the way back to the original that's now on the other side of the continent. Hope you like running around a lot, or having lots of loading screens. Go to a location, click a thing, wait for the progress bar to finish, and repeat 5 or 6 times. Do about 20 of the typical collect 5 bear asses quests that every MMO has, then talk to about 7 more NPCs. Time to disband your party every time the story decides to turn into a single player game and any friends you're playing with that have either done it already or finished first have to wait around for you to catch up or go off and play by themselves for a while. These quests are not fun to do, at least not by themselves anyway. Take away the game's story, and the actual things you're doing are tedious, repetitive, monotonous, boring. And as someone who was initially turned off by the long-winded dialogue, of course I'd eventually start to not pay attention and instead focus on the gameplay, which are quests which I found boring. And this is still the case even in Shadowbringers. I'm gonna give an example while abridging some of the names in context so I don't spoil anything. One instance, there's a series of quests involving getting directions from some crocodiles, because the crocodiles are the only ones who hold the key to the swamp monster boss and how to reach it. And they agree to help the party, but only if you agree to do their laundry. Really? I'm on an adventure to save the world and you're having me spend a significant amount of time on the main story quests, cleaning Lewis' underwear. And then they have the characters go, oh man, this seems like a lot of busy work. What a chore. Like, yeah, no kidding. Why do I have to do it? Like, look, here's a random quest I did, and at this point I was thoroughly hooked in the game. I was sold. I was gonna go through Shadowbringers and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Just look at this quest. Was that fun? Cause you do that about, like, ten times or so in that area alone. The limitations of the game's MMO systems makes an otherwise wonderful story extremely tedious to actually play through. Because it is a great story, and these are great characters, and this is a wonderful world with interesting people and cultures and history. But man, does the game get in its own way sometimes. And I think when people say the game gets better at Heaven's Word or Shadowbringers, I don't think they mean the quests get better. Because they don't really change that much, hence why I still wasn't enjoying Heaven's Word. You're still walking eight miles to talk to an NPC, you're still clicking on a location and waiting five seconds before walking to another location to repeat it four or five times. You're still having to disband your party to go do single-player stuff while your friends have to wait around for each other depending on who finishes the solo instance first. The story and characters and world are great in spite of these things. Not that they were removed and now you can enjoy the story easier. And no, I don't think I don't understand why the game does these things. Because I do. And I'm gonna prove it by explaining how those things don't bother me anymore. The first main reason is because it's an MMO. The game developers have to work with very limited systems and have to make sure you can't just plow right through to the endgame in a couple of hours. They can't really afford to implement something like a complex minigame or in-depth combat system or things that more traditional games can afford. Because they're developing a massive multiplayer online game. Emphasis on massive, they just don't have the resources. The second reason is that they're trying to tell a story with pacing and rising and falling action and quiet moments and character building in depth and nuance and things that take time to do. Part of the reason why so many praise 14 story and writing is because everything takes its time. Sometimes for worse, but most of the time for better. It's an actual story where you're not constantly hitting things for hours on end because that wouldn't make sense in a typical story. Think of the average amount of action in a TV show. It's kind of few and far between. These shows have a lot of talking, downtime, that sort of stuff. 14 is kind of similar in that way. The third is the all-to-overused pretentious video game buzzword, immersion. The reason the crocodiles have us do all those chores is to make you feel as annoyed as the characters are. The reason you have to look around in five different spots and find nothing is because the thing you're looking for is incredibly rare and you wouldn't be able to find it just by looking around randomly. The reason the characters talk the way they do with such deliberate vocabulary is to establish a tone and culture and feel for this world and these people. That they talk that way to set it apart from our everyday world. The reason you have to travel such long distances is to show and feel the vastness of the world, the buildings, the cities, kingdoms, are huge masses that are far apart in a big universe. In essence, because you are role-playing. This is the part of enjoying the game that is not going to click with everyone because it is a very acquired thing to get immersed in a game. Some people require some level of presentation in order to really, really get sucked into the world. Real life would be an incredibly annoying and boring game. You have to consume very specific items that are only consumable in a limited amount of time. Every few hours or else you suffer a debuff. You have to stop playing the game for several hours or suffer another debuff. You gotta stop what you're doing every few hours to get rid of your consumables or suffer a debuff. There's no fast travel, no heads up display, no pause menu, no skip dialogue button, and you gotta fold each individual piece of laundry and watch the full animation each and every single time it happens. Red Dead Redemption 2. Now, obviously Final Fantasy XIV doesn't do the role-play and simulation to this extent, but that's essentially the thought behind all these tedious and sometimes boring nonsensical missions. When you get into character, really putting yourself in the shoes of your warrior of light, then the long search you're doing just feels like another day for you, rather than an annoying roadblock stopping you from unlocking the next raid content. You are in the world. You're participating in the story. In all of its upsides and downsides, all that said, whether it does this well or not is going to be, again, subjective and differ from person to person. At the time, this in my opinion still did not make the questing any less tedious, monotonous or boring, and that if you aren't willing to trudge through them for the story, then the story itself might not convince you. Or will it? Part 3. Setting the Right Mindset. I've been fairly negative for a majority of this video so far, so let's turn it around a bit. Chekhov's Gun is a concept that describes how every element of a story should contribute to the whole. The basic gist of the writing philosophy is this. If in the first chapter, it's written that there is a loaded gun hanging on the wall, at some point in the story, that gun absolutely must go off. Otherwise, don't put the gun there. Now there are variations of the gun going off that doesn't always have to follow the audience's expectations, but if it's brought up in the story, it has to have significance in some way. It's not a universal rule, but it's definitely a piece of writing advice that is tried and true, and many writers consider it a good thing to keep in mind. A writing tool, if you will. Just like the hero's journey, the rule of threes, and basically anything you can hear Red talking about on overly sarcastic productions. Final Fantasy XIV uses this in its writing all the time, almost to a formula, and that's not a bad thing. I'd say in many ways it does it competently at worst, and masterfully at best. And that's the philosophy behind a lot of its writing, and I think what turned me off of the MSQ for such a big portion of my 300 hours. Almost everything is set up for payoff later. And now that I'm hooked on the game, can I say with confidence that all that setup was worth it? Ehhhhhhh. Okay, yes, it is pretty awesome to see the crocodile show up in their freshly cleaned and bedazzled underwear that I myself helped them with, but did I really need to walk 40 miles back and forth between the washing machines to do 20 wash cycles? Maybe it was necessary to get that payoff, but then there are other quests that achieve the same effect without such annoying tasks, I don't know. Maybe my tolerance and patience is just a lot lower than a lot of people when it comes to putting up with all that setup. Maybe it was my experience with old school MMOs where if three quests in the story don't amount to anything, it's a clear sign that the rest of the story is not going to be worth paying attention to. I don't think it's entirely my or the game's fault, really, and again, it's subjective and the answer to that question will differ from person to person and vary from quest to quest. Some people are going to think sniffing the chocobo was necessary for the story. Some people will not. But when I started to realize that the game does do this, I started to adjust my patience and expectations a bit, and that is really what it took. Yes, the quests are tedious. Yes, you probably talked to about 10 more NPCs than you should have to. Yes, I do think in many places in ARR they could cut down even more quests even after they already did so recently. And yes, I'll say it, I don't think the chocobo sniffing quest was all that necessary to tell the story they wanted to tell. Some people would disagree, which is fine. This is going to be an extremely subjective thing. Plenty of people will like the story just the way it is and wouldn't want it changed even a little, and that's fine too. I'm just saying that with how the story went about making you do some of these menial tasks, that it actively turned me away from the MSQ. And as a result, the entire game as a whole, since so much of it hinged on doing the MSQ. The more insightful of you may have come to the conclusion that a lot of my dislikes for the MSQ are sounding like complaining that my strawberry ice cream is not a lemon lime popsicle instead. And yeah, it kind of is. But some people like strawberry ice cream and I don't think either side is wrong. People can like or dislike whatever they want. But when I finally started to realize and accept that it was strawberry ice cream and that I wasn't going to get a lemon lime popsicle, I started to eat it like one rather than being upset that it's not being the thing that I want it to be. The moment this came about was around August of 2020. Patch 5.3 had just come out and was wrapping up the epilogue story of Shadowbringers. And I was watching a few friends and other streamers playing the MSQ. And since I didn't have any agency in actually playing, not being able to just mash the skip button, I was forced to pay attention to what was going on. I mean, not actually forced to. I could close the stream if I ever wanted to. But you get what I'm saying. I had to sit there and watch and read. And I was engrossed. Even without all the context leading to that point in the story, there seemed to be some big things happening. And I wanted to know what was going on. And so a bit after that stream, I logged into my account, which I had previously story skipped to Shadowbringers in a last ditch effort to find the diamond in the rough of this game. And I started watching through all the cutscenes, slowly getting more and more engaged by and invested in the story. Then when I got all caught up with Shadowbringers, I threw out my gripes about what the game wasn't and instead started playing the game for what it is. And what it is, no joke, is some of the best storytelling I have had the pleasure to participate in. I'm not going into any spoiler territory, so don't worry, but the ways this game ties plot points and characters together. The way it builds its world's rules and trusts your ability to know those rules and rewards you for doing so. The way it lets characters have emotional moments all to themselves just so you can see how they feel. The way it builds up to story climaxes that just make you want to jump up and cheer at how freaking cool it gets. I hadn't realized that for the longest time, I was skipping so much of the journey, the main story quest, so I could get to the real content when in reality, the journey to the endgame, the story and build-up and time is the real content. That and it's always nice to have a story that takes the time it needs. But all this has been me talking about the main story quest, right? Aren't there other parts of the game that need to be good too? Can't you just not bother with the MSQ and just enjoy the gameplay part? And yeah, maybe other people in my shoes would have been able to enjoy the game even with having to click grind through all the dialogue or just flat out buying a story skip. But at least for me, being invested in that main story made pretty much everything better, especially since so many other facets of the game revolve around it. But hey, shouldn't the gameplay also be able to stand on its own? And yeah, I agree. I think if you can't enjoy a game's story, you should still be able to enjoy its gameplay, which as I said before, Final Fantasy 14 does a great job in this department as well. One thing I didn't mention is that while I was trying my best to get into the game and bashing my head against the wall that was the MSQ, I was enjoying other parts of the game that didn't involve that much MSQ. Things like hunting for cool gear, doing dungeons and boss fights where your class's role and abilities actually start to play into account. Getting together with friends and attempting high difficulty fights that require teamwork, coordination, and many, many, many attempts. There is plenty to enjoy in the game if you are someone who likes customizing, grinding, raiding, dungeoning, optimizing crazy ability combos, being the center of attention, being hot, being hot, being really hot, being animate, being small, collecting Pokemon, collecting cool ass mounts, earning all those things through playing the game because that's the only way to get them taking down the biggest, baddest, angriest boss that would make Sekiro's bosses ask for accessibility options. Oh my God! Look at everyone's health! Ow! Look at my health! Ah! And so, so many things that you can do independent of reading any of the MSQ. And it's all so, so good. Part four, the correct way to start. But let's say you're still like me from a few years ago. You're in the mindset that you don't care how good the payoff is. Boring quests and gameplay and spam clicking through the dialogue to get to the good part is a huge turnoff. How can you even like the game? Well, honestly, maybe you won't. And that's okay. There's a free trial up to level 60, so you're good to try it out with no cost to you other than a little bit of your time. But if you really want to know how to get past those things that hold you back from enjoying the game, here are a few ways I feel can help alleviate some of those gripes. Firstly, three different paths you can approach and start playing the game. Path one, the purest. If you've got the patience, try your best to endure the base game of a realm reborn. It's actually got some parts that are better than I remember after doing some research for this video. And they've definitely cut out a lot of really pointless quests. It may be a real trudge, but the people who are able to handle that part are the ones I think can appreciate all the payoff the most. And speaking as someone who does not look forward to when I'm eventually going to go through ARR again in the New Game Plus, I do still envy those who are able to experience it properly. Hey, Jocat from the future. I actually went ahead and did play through New Game Plus already because this video was taking too long to make. And I even streamed my experience, which was useful for getting footage for this video. It isn't much, but go and give them these twilight pretzels, would you? I find comfort food always helps me when I'm feeling like killing myself. Jesus. You know, he's not wrong. Those streams can be watched on my VODS channel, Jocat Streams, for anyone who is interested. A word of warning, though, they are very long. Best way I can recommend making it less tedious is doing it with friends. Everything's better with friends, and hey, it's an MMO. It's kind of made for them in mind. Path to the moderate. If you have some cash to spare and just want to immediately get to the good part, buy a story skip for a realm reborn so you can start Heavensward and watch the story cutscenes from the inn. There's a book called The Unending Journey. It should give you the basic bullet points and most of what you need to know going into it. Maybe a few story recap videos could be good to catch you up on the finer details too. People aren't kidding when they say Heavensward is when the story gets good. Like I said, it's still got tedious quests, all the expansions do really, but at least this one has great moments and good voice acting in it. All strength to the colony. Speak and I shall listen. Also dragons. And handsome elfmen. Path 3. The Impatient. If you really just want to get to the endgame or just want to experience the best expansion according to nearly the entire playerbase, you can buy a story skip to get to Shadowbringers immediately. I can attest that it is, in my opinion, the best expansion and story, though it may not have as big of an impact or payoff if you do this. Hey, Joe Kat from the future again. At the time of recording this, I have just recently completed Endwalker and so this statement is no longer accurate. At least the part about Shadowbringers being the best expansion in my opinion. That thing about the story not having as big of an impact as a result of skipping, that still holds true, especially once you reach 6.0. Endwalker is amazing and in my opinion even surpasses Shadowbringers, however it does require you to have played or at least experienced in some way all the previous expansion stories to understand what's going on, including a realm reborn. Hell, especially a realm reborn. After we get back to the video, past Joe Kat is going to mention that Shadowbringers is a fairly contained story and although that is still partly true, that's only until you complete it and begin to play the post game quests leading up to Endwalker. In which case the game is expecting you to have played or understood all of the stories from the previous expansions, you're basically in the final chapter of a story after all. I say this as someone who did this as a last ditch effort and I honestly do regret it even if it is what finally allowed me to start enjoying the game. There are going to be a few things that will also go over your head unless you watch the cutscenes to catch up on what's going on. But aside from that, it's a fairly contained story. Larry Zauer called it an Isekai and that's less of an exaggeration than it sounds. This is also the path you should take if you have cash and really just don't care about the story at all and just want to get all the fights unlocked. Unfortunately, you will still need to unlock a lot of other things by yourself, like the raids and some of the high-end trials as there is no just unlock everything for me button. But this is the closest thing you can get. I highly, highly, highly recommend against going with this path unless, like me, you've tried everything. This should be considered a last resort. And here are a few things to keep in mind and try to apply to your playthrough regardless of which path you choose to go with. 1. Treat this game like a more old-school RPG. You know, like back in the day when you had to read everything in text boxes and stuff. Either that or a visual novel because there's going to be a lot of reading. The MSQ is definitely more of a single-player game, so be prepared to be on your own a lot of the time. Immediately contradicting this, 2. Bring friends. This is a pretty obvious one, but yeah, friends make everything better, including reading. It also means you get to run dungeons and raids and bosses with them. It's pretty great when you have a full stack. And trust me, if your friends have already played through the MSQ, they'll be more than happy to go through it again with you. 3. After you beat a Realm Reborn, do the Hildebrand quests. The first one is called The Rise and Fall of a Gentleman, and you can get it from this guy in Uldah. If a Realm Reborn didn't sell you on the game's writing, and honestly for a lot of you it probably won't, this definitely will. Do not look up anything about it, just know that it is some of the most amazing and wonderful writing in video games that I have had the pleasure of experiencing. I might even tie with the MSQ as one of my favorite stories in the game. 4. Once you start Heavensward and reach Ishgard, do the Dark Knight job quests. You can grab the first one from this guy, and it's some great character writing for your own character, if you can believe it. It's honestly super good. And you know when people say parts of a game are way better when you experience it yourself? Well, this one really is one of those experiences. Some will say it makes all the rough quests worth it. I personally don't think so, but it does certainly acknowledge them in a way that I think is really, really creative and neat. And if you need any more selling, the writer for this quest line went on to write for the MSQ for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. So yeah, even Square Enix realized that it's got some chops. 5. Don't binge the MSQ unless you are really into it. This game's pacing is slow. Really slow, and it can feel like trudging through tar if you try to get through it all at once for some people. Once you're completely hooked by the story, it's totally fine to go do some other things like job quests or unlocking raids and stuff, or even just taking a break from the game entirely. Take your time. Don't be like me. Don't try to get through the MSQ as fast as possible. You will hate it. 6. Most of all, pay attention. I made the mistake of glossing over things or skipping a few dialogue boxes that I felt wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But honestly, most, if not everything, is kind of useful information or character building or build up for some kind of payoff later. Whether or not it pulls it off may be arguable at times, but for the most part, the storytelling formula in this game rewards you for paying attention. So pay attention. So yeah, and that's how I figured out how to get past Final Fantasy 14's biggest barrier to entry. At least for me, and start enjoying the game. And I enjoy it so, so much. So much more than I thought I would, especially with how frustrated I was with it before. In the past few months alone, I've joined a free company, made new friends, created a badass and pretty cute looking character that I'm proud of, organized a raiding group taking down some of the toughest fights in the game. I won the lottery, I bought a house, I got married, I started streaming my reactions to patch announcements and updates. I'm genuinely starting to get excited about things in this game. I'm browsing YouTube, constantly looking for every bit of 14 content I can inject into my eyeballs. I spent way too much money on Fantasia and I even made a crap guide series dedicated to the game. I am obsessed with this game now. I'm constantly trying to recruit more people to come play so that I can see them experience the wonders and joys it has to offer. And best of all, so that I can join in and be right alongside them when they do. Well I guess that's the end of this story then. Thanks for sitting through all of that. I like this game so much. And make no mistake, this is far from the last time I'm going to be talking about it. Which reminds me, given that I've been playing a cat boy for pretty much my whole 14 career, I think it's about time I start embracing the cat part of my name from now on. So yes, this is a real thing. This is happening now. I just like this. It makes me feel happy. No fear, no fear! No fear! No fear! No fear! No fear! No fear! Yeah! We got gold! Woo! Oh my god. That's what I'm talking about baby! Um Joe? Your gear? Do you have 38,000 health? Oh no! My gear broke. My gear broke. My gear broke. Do we want to leave the instance? Oh my no. Maybe that's why I couldn't grab aggro. I'm sure she doesn't sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But all the horrible light that came out and went and clapped around.