u/PhDVa

My brother has been playing this game since A Realm Reborn, and has cleared every Savage Tier on release for over a decade. He's like a hardcore, dps-tracking, 99-parsing raider. I myself am much more of a Harvest Moon kinda girl, so when he finally convinced me to play at the end of Shadowbringers, i cared much more about the storytelling (i'm a writer) and dressing up my character like a pretty (yet badass!) princess.

Now we both love love love this game and it's a big part of our lives. So he tried to get our mom to play it too. But she's 75 and doesn't know the first thing about WASD or whatever, though to her credit she did beat Disco Elysium!! But FFXIV is just wayyy beyond her physical capabilities as a senior citizen who doesn't know what an "emote" or a "macro" is.

So I've taken it upon myself to do a playthru for her. She designed the character, picks the outfit, and selects all the dialogue options, but i *do* all the fights and stuff, and stream it to her on Discord. it's been amazing. We've been at it for a couple years now and are partway thru 5.0

But we're up to >!the trolley!< and i just—she's a sweet lady, i love her to death—but i just feel like she's getting tired of this. she'd never say so! she always loves to play. But lately i've just felt like she doesn't want to play as much, it's too much of an imposition, she'd rather watch television, and it's not fun if i have to force her thru the story…

We planned to end in 6.1 at the end of the first main arc, so we're already, like, 70% of the way through! And she loves the characters, and she gets really invested, and there's still some great stuff coming up—in fact, arguably, we're coming to the very best part! But as the one who's been taking her through the story, I'm reaching a point where I feel like I'm dragging her across the finish line, and I feel bad if she's, like, getting bored at this point, and only sitting through Endwalker out of love for my brother and I, not because she truly appreciates the story.

And that's not even counting 6.X and Dawntrail! Soon there will be Evercold as well… playing 1-3 hours a week with my mother, it's taken MULTIPLE YEARS for us to get halfway thru 5.0. I've recommended this game to people and the most common response I get is "it's just too overwhelming"

And I think by the time 9.0 comes around, there really won't be very many people willing and able to devote hundreds of hours to catch up to current content. I'm no fan of Asmongold but he brought a lot of people into this game, and even he gave up in Stormblood. I really think the weight of the story is about to hit critical mass, if it hasn't already.

BUT the story of this game is imho a masterpiece on the calibur of Seasons 1-4 of Game of Thrones, so i could see why people would be hesitant to change it

OTOH i think the trimming of 2.0 they did in 5.3 was very helpful, so there is precedent

TL;DR: In the interest of attracting new players, and making crossover events easier to unlock, would you support an option to play through an abridged version of the MSQ? Or do you think the game should embrace its Shakespearean density and say the One Piece level of content *is* the appeal, and if people don't like it they can skip the cutscenes or buy a level boost?