I started playing FFXIV in late Stormblood, and was in such a rush to catch up to the story before Shadowbringers launched that, despite it being well-publicized that you should really complete Crystal Tower before 5.0 released, I did not. Looking back on the entirety of my experience playing this game I love for nearly eight years now, there is nothing I regret more than that decision. It was clear to me standing upon Mt. Gulg looking upon this catboy that I should have known who he was, but I didn't. My WoL stayed silent because she did not have a choice to call him his name because she didn't know it, and neither did I, the player.
Making Crystal Tower a hard requirement to move on to Heavensward, to me, has always been an objectively good decision with very few drawbacks. The only argument I have ever found valid is that if you have not been making the effort to complete it before hitting the point where the game tells you it is required to proceed, it does ruin the pacing of the actual MSQ to be forced to do something entirely different for several hours before continuing. What I am about to suggest will exacerbate this somewhat, albeit in a different part of MSQ, but I do feel like it is necessary for future story to reach its fullest potential.
This is your last chance to stop reading before I spoil major plot points for MSQ through current patch (7.5, but prior to the release of the final bit of story in 7.56), HW's Warring Triad trial series, and the ShB role quests (which are miles better than anything and everything EW and DT had to offer in that department, in my opinion.)
This is going to have to be shortened into many posts in the same thread, by the way, as it is "too long" and "needs to be less than 3000 characters." Sorry! I will be pasting the rest of my essay/manifesto/whatever in subsequent replies below if I am not allowed to edit this post with the rest of my text. I could just edit the rest of it in after posting it. Why there is a limit for posting the thread, I will never know. Square Enix moment fr.
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It is clear to me that any plotline involving the Thirteenth/the Void (and by extension the conversation around the reflections as a whole) is being held back by the absence of Cyella/Cylva and Unukalhai, and judging by the inclusion of an optional line of dialogue available in 6.5 (I think?) mentioning the pair to Zero if you have completed the role quests and their subsequent capstones, I believe the writers' room know this as well. However, it is not as simple as simply requiring players to do side content to progress, as the requirements for completing these quests are currently locked behind leveling at least one of each tank, healer, physical melee/ranged dps, and caster dps to level 80, which is an enormous amount of effort for someone who simply wants to do story content. As someone who suffered for many years with anxiety around playing healers and tanks, it's not an easy or even feasible ask for a lot of players.
At the same time, having Cyella (I will continue to refer to her as such from here out, as it is how the game continues to do so) and Unukalhai sit in the Crystarium twiddling their thumbs while we make efforts to save their world from its current state (something that they are also working toward) feels extremely bad, and they are such interesting characters that I personally feel that these quests are worth playing for everyone. So I would like to pose a solution.
Remove the role requirements from the Shadowbringers role quests, and require all four plus their capstones for the continuation of MSQ past 5.55.
On its face, this sounds silly. They would no longer be role quests if you did such a thing, after all, and there is value (in my opinion) to be gained from playing them as intended on a role that mirrors that of the Cardinal Virtue you are tasked with slaying. However, I feel the potential inclusion of Cylva and Unukalhai in MSQ and the context their stories provide to the narrative surrounding the Thirteenth/Void and the Ascians' efforts towards the potential Rejoinings of the First and Thirteenth far outweigh any negative consequences of "unlocking" the quests.
Requiring the ShB role capstones also introduces the Warring Triad as a requirement, as you need Unukalhai's story to be completed there for it to continue in the following quests. This is Heavensward content, and involves both Y'shtola and Urianger as NPCs that are present in the story. As anyone who has ever wandered into the Waking Sands far past ARR's conclusion can tell you, Urianger permanently being stationed there in his original tatty robes to give you quests to unlock the Coils of Bahamut and various ARR extreme primals is jarring when it is either not possible for him to be there (due to his soul being trapped on the First) or to a lesser extent, when he has had his much-needed makeover and no longer covers his face. To avoid this, I would also propose to add requirements for various content gradually over the course of MSQ.
To me, the ideal progression of a new player going through MSQ for the first time would be as follows:
To me, this largely fixes the problem of Cyella and Unukalhai being unable to be addressed or considered in MSQ when they clearly should be relevant, and mitigates some of the problems introduced with the changes necessary to facilitate their quests now being required. There are still some criticisms to be made about this approach which I will briefly address, but as I have stated I think there is more to be gained from the inclusion of them into the common story experience than to be lost from requiring them.
The criticism that jumps out to me the most is that requiring other content hurts the pacing of MSQ as it currently exists (if you have not been keeping up with the quests concurrently as you progress.) As stated above, this is a problem that exists now with Crystal Tower having been made mandatory, but it has also always been present with regards to these role quests in particular, as one is already required to finish Shadowbringers. Going out of your way to do a sidequest chain is already annoying, but with the stakes as high as they are when you are told you must have one completed to do so (the WoL, after all, is actively dying of light poisoning and becoming a Lightwarden so there is a heavily implied time crunch) it feels kind of bad!
I do not want to touch this requirement at all, as I feel it is important to have at least one done for the context on Ardbert's companions and their fates before the climax of Shadowbringers, but the rest of them can wait until after. Additionally, retaining the role requirements for these quests until after base Shadowbringers has been completed does keep at least a little bit of the flavor involved with your role matching that of the Cardinal Virtue relevant in the questline.
As for the new added requirements, there is no way around them. Placing the requirement for the completion of "Shadow Walk With Me" after both Elidibus's defeat at the Seat of Sacrifice and the Scions' return to the Source at least eliminates any extreme urgency to other matters that would make other questing feel counterproductive. As "Safekeeping" and the subsequent chain involving Unukalhai's journey to the First and the establishment of his, Cyella's, and the Virtue Hunters' new efforts into restoring light to the Thirteenth were introduced in patch 5.4, they require Beq Lugg's presence and the knowledge of soul vessels to be feasible, and thus should not be able to be started until the point at which it was introduced and these story elements are confirmed to be present.
Warring Triad completion should be required before Stormblood's commencement both to avoid players encountering separate stories involving Y'shtola and Urianger when it should not be possible for them to be in both places (with different designs and classes/jobs) as well as to avoid the dissonance of being forced back down to level 60 synced content after having experienced 20 more levels of duties beyond it. The requirement to finish "A Bounty of Hunters" before Endwalker is the most subjective of them all, but to me it is best completed while the story of the First and the required role quests is fresh in the player's mind.
There are a few other, more minor criticisms of this approach to making the role quests mandatory that I want to briefly address:
This has been extremely long, and if you read all of this... uh, thanks! With Zero and Golbez's return in 7.5 promising that the Thirteenth will continue to remain relevant, our upcoming journey to the Fourth in Evercold, and our new ability to (relatively) easily traverse the boundaries between reflections (at what cost remains to be seen,) I feel the upcoming story can be made even stronger with the additional context added by what remain some of my favorite quests in the game to this day, and would love it if more people could experience them.Plus I would also like it if people stopped judging me for calling Shadowkeeper "wife" when I get E11 in normal raid roulette.
I hope you all have a lovely Evercold and beyond
Continue reading...
Making Crystal Tower a hard requirement to move on to Heavensward, to me, has always been an objectively good decision with very few drawbacks. The only argument I have ever found valid is that if you have not been making the effort to complete it before hitting the point where the game tells you it is required to proceed, it does ruin the pacing of the actual MSQ to be forced to do something entirely different for several hours before continuing. What I am about to suggest will exacerbate this somewhat, albeit in a different part of MSQ, but I do feel like it is necessary for future story to reach its fullest potential.
This is your last chance to stop reading before I spoil major plot points for MSQ through current patch (7.5, but prior to the release of the final bit of story in 7.56), HW's Warring Triad trial series, and the ShB role quests (which are miles better than anything and everything EW and DT had to offer in that department, in my opinion.)
---
It is clear to me that any plotline involving the Thirteenth/the Void (and by extension the conversation around the reflections as a whole) is being held back by the absence of Cyella/Cylva and Unukalhai, and judging by the inclusion of an optional line of dialogue available in 6.5 (I think?) mentioning the pair to Zero if you have completed the role quests and their subsequent capstones, I believe the writers' room know this as well. However, it is not as simple as simply requiring players to do side content to progress, as the requirements for completing these quests are currently locked behind leveling at least one of each tank, healer, physical melee/ranged dps, and caster dps to level 80, which is an enormous amount of effort for someone who simply wants to do story content. As someone who suffered for many years with anxiety around playing healers and tanks, it's not an easy or even feasible ask for a lot of players.
At the same time, having Cyella (I will continue to refer to her as such from here out, as it is how the game continues to do so) and Unukalhai sit in the Crystarium twiddling their thumbs while we make efforts to save their world from its current state (something that they are also working toward) feels extremely bad, and they are such interesting characters that I personally feel that these quests are worth playing for everyone. So I would like to pose a solution.
Remove the role requirements from the Shadowbringers role quests, and require all four plus their capstones for the continuation of MSQ past 5.55.
On its face, this sounds silly. They would no longer be role quests if you did such a thing, after all, and there is value (in my opinion) to be gained from playing them as intended on a role that mirrors that of the Cardinal Virtue you are tasked with slaying. However, I feel the potential inclusion of Cylva and Unukalhai in MSQ and the context their stories provide to the narrative surrounding the Thirteenth/Void and the Ascians' efforts towards the potential Rejoinings of the First and Thirteenth far outweigh any negative consequences of "unlocking" the quests.
Requiring the ShB role capstones also introduces the Warring Triad as a requirement, as you need Unukalhai's story to be completed there for it to continue in the following quests. This is Heavensward content, and involves both Y'shtola and Urianger as NPCs that are present in the story. As anyone who has ever wandered into the Waking Sands far past ARR's conclusion can tell you, Urianger permanently being stationed there in his original tatty robes to give you quests to unlock the Coils of Bahamut and various ARR extreme primals is jarring when it is either not possible for him to be there (due to his soul being trapped on the First) or to a lesser extent, when he has had his much-needed makeover and no longer covers his face. To avoid this, I would also propose to add requirements for various content gradually over the course of MSQ.
To me, the ideal progression of a new player going through MSQ for the first time would be as follows:
- 1. Complete MSQ (with all current requirements) through the quest "Heavensward."
- 2. Upon the completion of 3.0's MSQ, inform the player that the Warring Triad questline must be completed before progressing to Stormblood (similar to how you are told you must complete Crystal Tower after the conclusion of base ARR's MSQ at the defeat of the Ultima Weapon.)
- 3. Complete MSQ (with all current requirements) through the quest "Shadowbringers." As it does currently, this would require the completion of at least one role quest, and I believe at this time it should still be role locked so that the player must choose the quest corresponding to the job(s) they have leveled.
- 4. Upon the conclusion of 5.0, inform players that the uncompleted role quests no longer require a specific role to be leveled, and that all four questlines and the follow up "Shadow Walk With Me" must be completed before the quest "Alisaie's Quest" (the first quest of 5.4, and the beginning of the run-up into Endwalker MSQ) can be started.
- 5. After the completion of "Reflections in Crystal" (the final quest of 5.3,) "Safekeeping" (the follow up to "Shadow Walk With Me" that begins the story of Unukalhai on the First) becomes available for completion, and it and the subsequent chain of quests ending with "A Bounty of Hunters" must be finished before the first quest of Endwalker can be accepted.
To me, this largely fixes the problem of Cyella and Unukalhai being unable to be addressed or considered in MSQ when they clearly should be relevant, and mitigates some of the problems introduced with the changes necessary to facilitate their quests now being required. There are still some criticisms to be made about this approach which I will briefly address, but as I have stated I think there is more to be gained from the inclusion of them into the common story experience than to be lost from requiring them.
The criticism that jumps out to me the most is that requiring other content hurts the pacing of MSQ as it currently exists (if you have not been keeping up with the quests concurrently as you progress.) As stated above, this is a problem that exists now with Crystal Tower having been made mandatory, but it has also always been present with regards to these role quests in particular, as one is already required to finish Shadowbringers. Going out of your way to do a sidequest chain is already annoying, but with the stakes as high as they are when you are told you must have one completed to do so (the WoL, after all, is actively dying of light poisoning and becoming a Lightwarden so there is a heavily implied time crunch) it feels kind of bad!
I do not want to touch this requirement at all, as I feel it is important to have at least one done for the context on Ardbert's companions and their fates before the climax of Shadowbringers, but the rest of them can wait until after. Additionally, retaining the role requirements for these quests until after base Shadowbringers has been completed does keep at least a little bit of the flavor involved with your role matching that of the Cardinal Virtue relevant in the questline.
As for the new added requirements, there is no way around them. Placing the requirement for the completion of "Shadow Walk With Me" after both Elidibus's defeat at the Seat of Sacrifice and the Scions' return to the Source at least eliminates any extreme urgency to other matters that would make other questing feel counterproductive. As "Safekeeping" and the subsequent chain involving Unukalhai's journey to the First and the establishment of his, Cyella's, and the Virtue Hunters' new efforts into restoring light to the Thirteenth were introduced in patch 5.4, they require Beq Lugg's presence and the knowledge of soul vessels to be feasible, and thus should not be able to be started until the point at which it was introduced and these story elements are confirmed to be present.
Warring Triad completion should be required before Stormblood's commencement both to avoid players encountering separate stories involving Y'shtola and Urianger when it should not be possible for them to be in both places (with different designs and classes/jobs) as well as to avoid the dissonance of being forced back down to level 60 synced content after having experienced 20 more levels of duties beyond it. The requirement to finish "A Bounty of Hunters" before Endwalker is the most subjective of them all, but to me it is best completed while the story of the First and the required role quests is fresh in the player's mind.
There are a few other, more minor criticisms of this approach to making the role quests mandatory that I want to briefly address:
- - As stated above, I do believe that the quests lose some small amount of "flavor" if not completed on the role they were intended to be completed on, and the text itself makes multiple references to your character being proficient at the role as well. While I personally do not feel this would require actual changes to the quests' wording, the writing and dev teams may disagree. As a stout defender of much of ARR's now-cut content, I am not thrilled with the idea of changes to these quests, even if it is only to minorly change wording, but I do still see it as a net positive. Their current states are well-documented as it stands, and changes will not be nearly as drastic as were made to ARR.
- - All players having completed these quests prior to the 6.x quest series will make Cyella and Unukalhai's absence within them even more jarring. There is nothing that can be done about this other than simply continuing to ignore them, and as I hope I've made clear, I do not want that!
- - Players who are already caught up on MSQ but have not completed the role quests will have to go back and do so. Ideally this would be as soon as possible, so I would suggest removing the role requirements at least a patch before introducing a new quest with a hard requirement for them, and making clear that they will be required in the future.
- - Some people may think that the removal of role requirements removes "motivation" to level additional jobs. I disagree. Please show these people the amaro mount. He's my friend. When can I reskin my chocobo into an amaro? Or have both? Thank you
This has been extremely long, and if you read all of this... uh, thanks! With Zero and Golbez's return in 7.5 promising that the Thirteenth will continue to remain relevant, our upcoming journey to the Fourth in Evercold, and our new ability to (relatively) easily traverse the boundaries between reflections (at what cost remains to be seen,) I feel the upcoming story can be made even stronger with the additional context added by what remain some of my favorite quests in the game to this day, and would love it if more people could experience them.
I hope you all have a lovely Evercold and beyond
Continue reading...